Saturday morning's highly anticipated showdown between the 12th-ranked Hillsdale College volleyball team and 3-0 host Walsh was as good as advertised.
The Cavaliers, who are off to an impressive start in the spring 2021 season, gave the Chargers their first real test of 2021, winning a hotly-contested first set 29-27 to hand Hillsdale its first set loss of the year.
But as the match wore on, the Chargers found their stride and seized control, pulling out a 27-29, 25-20, 25-17, 25-15 win in four sets to run their winning streak in G-MAC regular season and tournament action to 59 and remain unbeaten in conference play in 2019.
Hillsdale got off to a hot start in set one, leading 16-11 midway through the set, but Walsh battled back and tied the Chargers at 18 points apiece. From there, the set was back and forth, with neither team taking a lead of more than two points. The Chargers hed 25-24 and 27-26 leads with the serve and a chance to close out the set, but Walsh answered both times and ended up scoring three straight points to close out the set and go up 1-0.
Trailing by a set for the first time in 2021, Hillsdale dug deep and rallied, pulling out a hard-fought second set 25-20, and then pulling away in the third set. With a chance to close out the match in the fourth set, the Chargers found another gear, jumping out to a 17-6 edge and never looking back to seal the victory.
As the match wore on, the Chargers' diverse and lethal offense began to assert itself more and more. After hitting just .151 in the first set with seven attack errors, the Chargers hit above .250 with just nine attack errors in the final three sets.
Junior Karoline Shelton continued her red-hot start to 2021 for the Chargers, leading Hillsdale in kills for the fourth straight match and setting a new career high in kills for a four-set match with 21. Shelton also added 19 digs for her first double-double of the season, and hit .364 for the match with just one attack error in 55 total swings.
Shelton had plenty of support up front from her Charger teammates. Senior and 2019 G-MAC Player of the Year Allyssa Van Wienen finished with 15 kills on 27 total attacks, a hitting percentage of .481, and also chipped in two solo blocks, three block assists and six digs on the night.
Sophomore Megan Kolp played her first full match of the season and finished with 10 kills and three block assists, giving the Chargers three players with 10 or more kills for the second straight match, and freshman Mazie Brown chipped in seven kills on 12 attacks for a hitting percentage of .500, and also added 11 digs, a solo block and three block assists.
Senior setter Lindsey Mertz continued to close in on 4,000 career assists with 46 in Saturday's victory, bumping her career total up to 3,749 in her best performance of the season to date.
Freshman libero Alli Wiese led the Charger defense with 33 digs, a career high, and two service aces, and senior defensive specialist Madie Schider chipped in 13 digs as well.
The road win over Walsh helps Hillsdale improve to 4-0 in the G-MAC on the season, and keeps the Chargers in first place. Hillsdale is one of four remaining undefeated teams in the conference, but the only one of those four to have played the full complement of four matches to date.
The Chargers travel to Ursuline next on Friday, Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. for a G-MAC match, then continue to Pennsylvania for a Saturday non-conference showdown with 23rd-ranked Gannon, the defending Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference champions and a Division II Elite Eight qualifier in 2019.
Photo by Anthony Lupi