The Hillsdale volleyball team split six away matches over two weeks of play as senior Karoline Shelton earned G-MAC North Division Offensive Player of the Week honors for the 10th time in her career.
The set of games included three conference matches against the Tiffin Dragons, Ashland Eagles, and Northwood Timberwolves. Although the Chargers were able to take two of the three matches, the Eagles swept them on Oct. 8, dealing the team its second in-conference loss of the season.
“In our match against Ashland we started out very strong with an early lead in the first set, but once they picked it up we were caught off guard and couldn’t recover quickly enough,” head coach Chris Gravel said. “We are excited to hopefully play them again later in the season.”
After splitting against Tiffin and Ashland, the Chargers competed at the Midwest Regional Crossover in Hammond, Indiana, on Oct. 14 and 15, where Shelton earned her offensive award. The senior outside hitter averaged 4.15 kills per set during the weekend and tied her career best of 22 match kills in a five-set loss to the Lewis University Flyers.
“At crossover, some of our goals were to start strong in the second set, because we had struggled with that early on in the season,” assistant coach Taylor Wiese said. “We also wanted to work on earning our points and going on service runs.”
The Chargers fought hard in their first day of play at the crossover, taking both the Grand Valley State Lakers and the Flyers all the way through five sets. The team was unable to secure a win in either case, however.
“This weekend, teams were able to take advantage of scoring runs and scoring multiple points at a time, especially when we could only score one or two at a time,” Gravel said.
Despite the disappointing couple of matches on Friday though, the Chargers swept the Northern Michigan Wildcats the following day to close out the crossover.
The team had a quick turnaround coming off the weekend as it prepared for its next match against the Northwood University Timberwolves on Oct. 18. The Chargers had already beaten the Timberwolves in a four-set home match earlier this season and were able to secure a second win against the conference opponent in a closely contested five-set match Tuesday night.
“It was a really good win, and Northwood put up a great fight,” senior setter and outside hitter Madeline Zenas said. “They had some big hitters on their side, but we really worked hard on focusing on what we could control and earning a point quickly after we had lost one. I think we came out really hard in the fifth set and really wanted to finish and that was really effective.”
The team now holds an overall record of 18-6 — 10-2 in conference — and prepares to return home for two more weekend matches against Lake Erie and Ursuline.
“We are excited for the weekend to be able to try a few new line-ups and show the depth of our team on game day,” Gravel said. “This is the second time playing these teams in conference, and we expect them to play at a high level against us.”