For the third straight match, the University of Indianapolis women’s volleyball team was victorious, beating Maryville 3-1 (25-11, 23-25, 25-20, 25-16).
The Greyhounds finished with more than 55 kills, the highest for the season so far. Senior outside hitters Hailey Brown and Arielle Knafel each had 16 kills and junior outside hitter Lynsey Hazelwood finished with 11. Senior setter Meghan Binkerd led the team with a total of 48 assists for the day.
The day before, the team defeated the University of Missouri-St. Louis on homecoming 3-1 (25-19, 25-13, 24-26, 26-24).
The Greyhounds had at least five players with five or more kills which has happened in the last six victories and Binkerd finished with 46 assists. The team also totalled 72 digs in the match.
The Greyhounds defeated the Cedarville University Yellow Jackets on Oct. 21, 3-1 (25-17, 25-18, 12-25, 25-18) in their annual “Dig Pink” match.
The Greyhounds, sporting pink jerseys, jumped out to an early lead against the Yellow Jackets, as Binkerd racked up 12 of her 41 assists in the first set, leading to five kills from five different Greyhounds.
UIndy fell 25-12 in the third set, but sealed the victory in the final set, winning 25-18, with six Greyhounds claiming several kills.
Senior defensive specialist Kimberly Trojan, named the Great Lakes Valley Conference defensive player of the week on Oct. 13, had gone 20 straight matches with double-digit digs, after claiming the win over Cedarville.
Trojan said that she attributed the award not only to her play, but the team’s play as a whole.
“It is an individual award, but it was still a team effort,” Trojan said. “I couldn’t have [made] the digs I got without the help of everyone else.”
Although the Greyhounds’ overall record stood at 12-8 following their win against the Yellow Jackets, UIndy had found success in conference matches to that point, as the Greyhounds started out 9-2 in conference play. With four conference matches remaining on the schedule, the Greyhounds have a possible shot of obtaining a regular season conference title.
Head Volleyball Coach Jason Reed emphasized consistency as a key factor in the team’s future success.
“When we control the outcome [of games] we are one of the better teams in the region and possibly the country,” Reed said. “We’ve had a decent handful of matches where we let our opponents control the tempo of the match. We start shooting ourselves in the foot and it costs us matches.”
The Greyhounds have had multiple strong contributors on offense and defense throughout the year, with five girls who have had more than 100 kills and five that have claimed more than 100 digs on the season.
“That is a testament to what we have within our group. But we are still lacking a little bit of consistency,” Reed said. “On the positive side, we might get good contributions from a few players in one match and a few players in another match, and that’s great. But what we’d like to see is a little more of the same in every match. And when we do [see more of the same], that’s when you see the blowouts and the matches where we are just cruising.”
Trojan reiterated the importance of the team’s playing clean volleyball in order to avoid beating themselves in games.
“The two games that we lost [in conference play], [was because] we weren’t in system and we were making a lot of errors, and that’s something we have talked a lot about,” Trojan said. “When we miss serves, we hit out of bounds. We are just handing out free points. In the games that we have lost, we’ve beaten ourselves.”
The Greyhounds will return to action on the road against Quincy University on Nov. 1. The match is set to begin at 5 p.m.
