Volleyball wins KCAC Championship with sweep of McPherson
By: David Toelle, KWU Sports Information

Ashley Winters serves during Wesleyan's 12-0 run to blow game two open as KWU swept McPherson on Tuesday night

Kansas Wesleyan wrapped up its first KCAC Volleyball championship since the 1998 season with a 30-21, 30-11, 30-23 sweep of McPherson on Tuesday night at Muir Gymnasium.

The Lady Coyotes still have one match remaining in the regular season, at Ottawa on Thursday, but have a two match lead in the standings with one match remaining.

“I’m glad we got it taken care of tonight,” KWU coach Shawn Taylor said. “It’s nice to know we can go into Thursday’s match with no pressure on us, and go out and have fun.”

The Lady Coyotes made the team’s five seniors final regular season home match a good one with the three game sweep of the Lady Bulldogs, for Wesleyan’s 14th consecutive win.

KWU jumped out to a 4-0 lead in game one and expanded the advantage to 7-2 forcing a McPherson timeout. The Lady Bulldogs would rally and get as close as 10-7, but four straight Lady Coyote points would yield a 14-7 lead. A Wesleyan service error would spark a three-point McPherson rally, but Sarah Claborn’s kill would get the KWU offense back on track with a 5-1 run to take a 19-11 lead. McPherson could get no closer than 20-14 the rest of the game as KWU took the first game 30-21 on a game ending block.

McPherson (6-19, 3-14) would score the first two points of the second game, but a service error and a Claborn kill would tie it up. McPherson would take a short-lived lead on a tip kill, before Wesleyan would use a Kolby Rhoades kill to start a three point run. McPherson would get as close as 5-4, when KWU opened things up in a big, big way.

A Whitney DuBois kill got it started as the Lady Coyotes would score 12 unanswered points, which included four aces by Ashley Winters to blow the game wide open at 17-4. McPherson broke the streak when Rhoades would get blocked at the net, making the score 17-5. The Lady Coyotes would regroup and score three of the next four to take a 20-6 lead. McPherson would score five of the next eight to make it 23-11, when Wesleyan turned it up again, scoring the final seven points of the game to take a two-game lead with a 30-11 win.

“They rely on a fast offense, and we took them out of it with our serve,” Taylor said. “It was an amazing run.”

The Lady Coyotes continued the run into the third game, scoring the first seven points, but McPherson rallied to cut the lead to 8-5. After an 8-2 Lady Coyote run would give Wesleyan a 16-7 lead, McPherson would score three straight to make it 16-10 and force a KWU timeout.

Out of the timeout, Wesleyan turned up the offense again, using a McPherson service error and back to back Claborn kills to go on a 6-1 run to blow the game open at 22-11. Rhoades would give KWU a 28-18 lead, but McPherson would score seven of the last nine points of the game, that was ended on a Claborn kill to give KWU the 30-23 game three win.

Claborn would lead Wesleyan (23-7, 16-1) with 21 kills, while Rhoades would add ten and Winters continued her late season success with seven kills to go along with her five aces and 13 digs. Claborn led the KWU defense with 16 digs, while Rhoades and Karissa Kent each had 15. Senior Kelli Berg led the way with 31 assists. Claborn led the blockers with two solos and one assist block, while DuBois had two assist blocks and Winters added one solo and two assist blocks, and senior Julie Garrett also had two assist blocks.

Wesleyan wraps up the regular season on Thursday at Ottawa, before heading into next week’s KCAC Post-Season Tournament as the No. 1 seed. Wesleyan will receive a bye into the semifinals, which will be on Thursday, November 8, at 7:00 inside Muir Gym.

-- KWU SI --