SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – The Kenyon College volleyball team concluded its 2018 season in Saturday's semifinal round of the North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament. The Ladies, the tournament's No. 4-seeded team, fell 3-1 to top-seeded host Wittenberg University.
The loss eliminated Kenyon from tournament play and finalized the Ladies' record at 16-12. Wittenberg, ranked as the No. 3 team in the nation in the latest American Volleyball Coaches Association poll, improved its record to 22-2 and advanced to Saturday evening's NCAC Tournament final to take on Hiram College.
Kenyon showed it certainly was ready for the challenge and upended the favored Tigers, 25-22, in the first set. The Ladies claimed an early lead in the set, but Wittenberg later rallied to move ahead 22-20. Kenyon called a timeout, got back on the court and rattled off five straight points. Two of those points came on kills from
Mackenzie Bruzzio and another point came from
Delaney Swanson, who had four kills in the set.
Wittenberg didn't take the set-one loss lightly. The Tigers roared back with set wins of 25-13, 25-10 and 25-11. Katie Hiestand and Aubrey Cox led the charge. Hiestand wound up with 12 kills without an error and Cox tallied 11 kills with just two errors. Additionally, Taylor Brown contributed another 11 kills for Wittenberg, which ran its win streak to 12 matches.
Swanson ended up leading Kenyon's attack with a total of 10 kills, while both Bruzzio and
Haley Witschey scored nine. Both Swanson and Bruzzio came up with 14 digs, too. Swanson, a senior, capped off her Kenyon career ranked third all-time in program history with 1,236 career kills. She also now ranks fourth in attack percentage (.198) and ninth in digs (1,191).
Kenyon's box score also included 28 assists and 13 digs from
Meghan Cason, as well as 16 digs and two service aces from
Katie Howard. Cason ended the season with 1,018 assists, the fifth-best, single-season output in program history.
As a team, the 2018 Ladies set single-season program records for kills per set (12.51) and assists per set (11.80).
