Hickey, Januski Earn All-Tournament Accolades
The Valpo volleyball team was represented by a pair of players on the Purdue Fort Wayne Invitational All-Tournament Team, as sophomore libero Emma Hickey (Granger, Ind./Penn) and senior middle Mallory Januski (Bourbonnais, Ill./Bradley-Bourbonnais) earned the honors for their performances over the course of the weekend.
Hickey averaged a team-best 5.50 digs/set over the three tournament matches, leading all players in all three contests. She picked up 19 digs in the Friday contest against SIUE before posting 18 matches in both of Valpo’s three-set wins on Saturday over Miami (Ohio) and Purdue Fort Wayne. She enters MVC play with 937 career digs, closing in on becoming the 24th player in program history to reach the 1,000-dig milestone.
Januski stood out on both sides of the net for the Beacons throughout the weekend. She opened with 10 kills on .474 hitting versus SIUE, tallied 10 kills on just 14 swings as she hit .643 and led all players with four blocks against Miami and closed the tournament with seven kills on .353 hitting and a match-best five blocks in the sweep of the host Mastodons. For the weekend, Januski led the team in both kills (2.70/set) and blocks (1.10/set) while hitting at a .480 clip.
For Hickey, it is her first All-Tournament honor of the season and the second of her career. Januski picks up her third All-Tournament accolade of the season and fourth of her career, becoming the first Valpo player since Allison Ketcham in 2018 to be named to three All-Tournament Teams in a single season.