ST. DAVIDS, Pa.— Eastern University Women's Volleyball secured a spot in the MAC Commonwealth Tournament with a four-set home win over the Messiah University Falcons. The Eagles (11-8, 5-0) won the opening two sets by decisive margins, but had to bounce back after dropping the third set, 25-13.
Olivia McGowan had all six of her kills in a 25-14 win the fourth.
Eastern and Messiah have a history of lengthy matches with close set scores. Tonight's narrative was quite different. Although each set contained several extended points with tremendous rallies, there were only two lead changes in the entire match, and each of the four sets finished with a wide margin.
After the teams traded sideouts to start the match,
Sarah Furey served seven-straight points to vault the Eagles into a 14-6 lead in front of a near capacity crowd. The Falcons called two timeouts during the run that featured three
Lane McLaughlin blocks and a service ace. McLaughlin finished the match with nine total blocks and a career-best seven kills. The first-year middle hit .500 without an error.
The Eagles closed out the set with efficient passing and aggressive serving for a 25-16 win.
Piper Xeller had four kills and McLaughlin had three as the Eagles hit .281 and had four blocks in the first.
The first five Eastern servers in the second set served for points. McGowan had a pair of aces and served for six points and
Veronica Faber had an ace as she served for three more points. As the Eastern lead jumped from 7-6 to 18-7, the Falcons took a pair of timeouts and tried multiple substitutions to stop the run.
The Eagles were successful on 9-of-13 (69%) sideout chances.
Jessie Schreiber had four kills and
Alexis Standford had three as the Eagles picked up four points on blocks and another four on aces on the way to a 25-12 win.
With all the momentum in one direction, the Falcons found resilience and battled back in the third. Though the Falcons did not have an ace in the frame, the guests served aggressively enough to get the Eagles out-of-system and capitalize. In a set that seemed nearly an exact mirror of the one before, Head Coach
Mark Birtwistle called both of his timeouts before his team had seven points. The Falcons hit .244 and held the Eagles to a negative number to extend the match with a 25-13 win.
McGowan started the match as a defensive specialist before moving to six rotations near the end of the third. The first-year found spots with six kills on ten swings as the Eagles hit .419 with only two hitting errors on the way to a 25-14 win in the fourth.
With McGowan and
Emma Ciesielka getting most of the chances, the Eastern passing was on point in the fourth. The Eagles gave up only two points on 15 serve-receive opportunities. Furey, McGowan, and Faber all delivered aces down the stretch to help to ratchet up the score.
"This was a good conference win for us," Head Coach
Mark Birtwistle said after the match. "The team fed off the energy of the home crowd and was able to put pressure on a solid Messiah team. It was good to see our middles involved and successful on offense."
With her nine-block effort, McLaughlin now has 89 blocks in 56 sets for a 1.59 blocks/set average. When Michelle Paulsen set the program-record with 176 in 2016, she averaged 1.30 blocks/ set.
Again playing with a single setter, the Eagles relied on Furey to run the offense. She had 35 assists, 12 digs, and three blocks as the Eagles hit .202 for the match.
Grace Cooper had 18 digs and was in the middle of a serve-receive that allowed just one ace on the evening.
With three matches remaining in the MAC Commonwealth schedule, the Eagles have secured a spot in the post-season. The Eagles will play at Albright and host Alvernia next week before wrapping up the league slate with a Nov. 4 home match against Stevenson. As the Mustangs have just a single loss and are sitting right behind Eastern in the standings, that match will likely be for the top spot and hosting privileges.
Eastern is at Misericordia for a non-league match on Friday evening.
