The first trip to the southern portion of the Great Midwest Athletic Conference yielded a pair of 3-0 wins for the Hillsdale College volleyball team.
The Chargers recorded their third straight victory, 3-0 over Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville Saturday afternoon. Hillsdale is now 10-3 overall and 3-2 in G-MAC play.
Next weekend, Hillsdale will play at home across all three days of homecoming weekend, starting with a Friday night matchup against Ohio Valley University.
Saturday's first set unfolded exactly like the one the Chargers played Friday night at Kentucky Wesleyan. Hillsdale recorded kills on six of its first seven attempts, and routed the Trojans 25-11 to open up a 1-0 lead. The rest of the match played out much more competitively, as Trevecca Nazarene upped its hitting percentage as the match wore on. But Hillsdale's depth and power were too much, as it wrapped up the match with wins of 25-20 and 25-22.
Coach Chris Gravel constantly preaches to his team to serve aggressively, and the team carried out that directive effectively against the Trojans. Hillsdale notched a season-high 13 service aces as a team, six coming from freshman setter Lindsey Mertz, who was outstanding in all areas Saturday.
Mertz played just a few points in set 3, so basically, in two sets played, she had 26 assists and 10 digs to go along with her 6 service aces. She helped direct the offense to 30 kills and just 4 hitting errors in the first two sets as well.
Junior Paige VanderWall had her fifth straight match with double digit kills, leading the Chargers with 11 while hitting .556 for the match. Junior Kara Vyletel had 9 kills, 6 digs and 3 service aces, and Allyssa Van Wienen added 6 kills with 3 block assists.
Sophomore libero Taylor Wiese led the back line with 12 digs, and had two service aces of her own.