Leafs Spike Lakers In Loop, Eclipse .500
Seniors Gerke and Swartzendruber combine to hit .433 in four-set win
CHICAGO — Darienne Maust’s posted a team-high 10 kills and two blocks while Christy Swartzendruber added six winners, three aces and 11 digs as Goshen College posted a four-set women’s volleyball win over Roosevelt University on Thursday night in the Goodman Center at Congress Parkway and Wabash Avenue in Chicago.
The Maple Leafs (3-2) took their first lead of the match at 20-19 in the first set, part of a 10-4 run to end the stanza with a 25-23 edge. Natalie Omtvedt posted three kills in the opener as her team hit .571 with nine kills in 14 tries.
Roosevelt (0-1) one-upped Goshen in number but not percentage in the second, posting 13 winners but three errors for a .526 mark while winning 25-13 to level the match. The Lakers turned in three runs of four points or longer, including a six-point spurt on Daria Voronina to take a 19-10 lead.
Goshen never trailed in the third set, and after giving up an attack error to lead 8-7, never led by fewer than two points. GC pounded 14 spike winners in the stanza, including four each from local products Maust and Taylor Eash, and pulled ahead two sets to one with a 25-17 win.
The fourth set involved four lead changes, twice as many as the other three combined. After a 4-4 start, Rochester got three winners from Maddy Cyzewski in a 7-3 run to take a four-point lead. But Goshen would counter with 11 of the next 15 points, getting winners from four different players to pull ahead 19-16.
A Leaf service error, two aces and a kill put the ball back in Roosevelt’s court and prompted the Goshen bench to call timeout. The teams traded winners to make it 22-21 Roosevelt, and after a Cyzewski ace, GC called its final timeout as the tables turned one last time.
Sydney Cruz leveled the score with a winner to give the Maple Leafs match point at 24-23. The visitors squandered match points on an attack error and an RU kill before Maust’s solo stuff ended the match at 27-25.
Jennifer Ritchie matched Swartzendruber with 11 digs for Goshen and added eight assists, three shy of Ally Roehr’s team-high 11. Ritchie and MacKinnon Tracy finished with a pair of aces each. Meghan Gerke added seven kills against one error: between Gerke and Swartzendruber, the Maple Leaf seniors hit .433 with one miscue in 30 tries.
Brooke Lee had 17 kills and Cyzewski nine for Roosevelt, which out-killed Goshen 45-39 and posted 17 winners but also racked up 39 errors between hitting and setting. The Lakers’ Mackenzie Bell put up a match-high 28 assists.
Goshen continues its season-opening nine-match road trip with a visit to Lawrence Tech on Thursday at 6 p.m. The match, which is the Maple Leafs’ sixth in a row against a team making its season debut, also begins a span of three matches in 25 hours.