Wednesday, Sep. 1 Match Day!

Updates: I saw on IG that the Pacific/Multnomah match was cancelled. Pacific has a blurb up on their website stating the cancellation was due to “health and safety protocols”, which means Covid. One day not even started and Covid is leading the region 1-0. Ugh.

Links are updated as of Wednesday morning. Only missing video from St. Thomas match and stats from Whittier/UCSC match. I now have the correct links for Trinity and Puget Sound, too.

Here we go! And, no sound! I hate volleyball with no sound. I like it more than no volleyball but it’s annoying. I tuned in and everyone was standing in the same direction with their hands over their hearts. I had no idea what was going on. Was it a mass heart murmur check? A slow game of Simon Says? We always need sound.

Pet peeve #1 – Third ball over using hands needs to be clean. You gain an advantage when it’s not. If the setter does it on second ball, fine. Only hurts your own team.

Real life interrupted me a bit during this match, but Austin College is rolling here. Should get the sweep. Victoria Smith can’t be stopped right now with 13 kills and only 1 error.

Austin College does get the sweep. Victoria Smith 13 kills, Brooklyn Talley 23 assists and Mari Prazak 15 digs.

Outside of our region, Fisher (NAIA) beat NVU-Lyndon in 3 sets: 25-9, 25-1, 25-10. Yikes. NVU-Lyndon’s last win was in 2017. Let’s all pull for them this year!

Southwestern about to start. Go Bucs! Uh oh. No sound and we’ve got that heart murmur check going again, it appears.

No sound. Live stats not working. Score not shown on video. This has to be the first day of matches.

Just received word that Chapman will not be playing this weekend. “Health and safety protocols”. Covid will have at least 5 wins on the season after the first weekend.

I think Concordia is winning the first set but no way to know. Concordia’s defense is really good. Alyssa Legette is listed as 5’2″ and as an outside hitter. She’s setting and doing great. Concordia takes the first set. No clue what the score was.

Trinity is starting late. 7:30 is the new time. Live stats for St. Thomas doesn’t work. Ugh people!

Gawd. I started tracking the score by hand like you did back in club when you didn’t trust the score keeper. Now the video is out. It’s back. I think Southwestern is winning big in the second set. Still early. The serving of Emma White and Riley Brantley has been very strong here for SU. Now Legette is an outside. She can do it all it appears! SU with the set 2 win big. Sound is working now but it blew out my ears when it started up.

Concordia wins set 3 and have 3 match points in the fourth but SU wins 28-26. Going to a fifth.

ETBU takes a close first set over Dallas 25-23. Whitman wins an easy first set in their match. Trinity is still in a delay. Now almost 2 hours! No idea why. No clue what is happening with St. Thomas.

In set 5, SU with a big lead but Concordia coming back. Timeout and it’s 12-10 SU. Match point for Southwestern now (14-10). And Southwestern wins in 5 sets. Jeez. The Pirates are going to end up killing me if this keeps up.

Dallas takes set two. All Tied. Whitman wins set two an is up 2-0 in games.

Was watching the PLU match, which is tied 1-1. Interesting to see PLU treating this match as a scrimmage for the most part as he’s using all of his players. I mentioned below that these NAIA matches don’t mean anything but, still, I’m not sure I would risk losing. Reason #49 why I’m not a coach!

SU/Concordia – Too many errors in this one from both teams. Ten team blocks versus 2 was probably a big difference maker in this one. Concordia led by Klyexus Block with 20 kills, Alyssa Legette with 37 assists and Block again with 25 digs. I can’t remember a Concordia match where I didn’t mention Ghormley (15 kills/17 digs). SU was led by Lauren Crabtree with 12 kills, Katelyn Whitehead with 25 assists and Ali Grona with 24 digs.

Looks like Huston-Tillotson beat St. Thomas in 5-sets. Finding very little on this match.

The Trinity match was delayed all night before it was cancelled. Maybe a Tigers parent can tell us what happened. Trinity did play a scrimmage so the issue wasn’t with them.

Dallas dropped the first set but won the next three. Live stats looks to be broken (of course). So nothing on this match at the moment. Update! Dallas was led by Cassie Dyoub with 16 kills, Larissa Ramirez with 36 assists and Ramirez again with 21 digs. ETBU was led by Megan O’Neal with 8 kills, Jenna Helms with 21 assists and Lillie Hill with 22 digs.

Whitman swept Walla Walla but their schedule shows the reverse. I swear they did this last year, too. Whitman were led by Nicole Kelly with 9 kills, Tate Cadang with 14 assists and Brooke Valentine with 13 digs.

Austin College gets their second win of the night in another sweep. The ‘Roos were led by Riley Abernethy with 10 kills, Brooklyn Talley with 21 assists and Mari Prazak with 18 digs.

Lewis & Clark and Willamette are still going on. It’s 2-1 LC right now as they are early in the fourth set. PLU and Northwest are also in the fourth set with NW leading 2-1. I’m not seeing anything on the George Fox match. Video doesn’t seem to be there, either. Looks like they fixed the Whitman schedule and they are now credited with the win!

UC Santa Cruz take an easy first set off of Whittier 25-15, which is interesting. Live stats are an issue as the first set is listed as 29-21. This stuff just makes me crazy. Close out the set people! I’m not seeing the video for this match. 😦

No live stats for Pomona-Pitzer so what else is new tonight. Video shows them down 1-0. Credit to the LIFE Pacific broadcast crew that labeled Pomona-Pitzer as Pitz on the score line.

Puget Sound is up 1-0 in their match but the video stream is not working. What a night for problems!

Northwest takes down PLU in 4 sets. PLU was led by Baylee Johnson with 10 kills, “Team” with 17 assists (What the…) and Halle Hetzler with 14 digs. Emily Dulaney set most of the time so it was her stats that got messed up. Sad because it probably won’t be fixed. Two starters that are going to be huge for PLU only played the first set and I know one of them picked up an injury.

The NWC is going to be fun (and will keep me up at nights) if the LC/Willamette match is anything to go by. LC wins in 5 sets with the last set going 17-15. LC led by Kelsey Parker with 13 kills, Michelle McGinn with 43 assists and Katie Shimura with 22 digs. Emma Ehlers pitched in 8 blocks! Willamette was led by Natalie Klotz with 19 kills, Emma Porter with 40 assists and Shyla Sato with 23 digs.

George Fox with the win 3-1. I don’t have a box score, yet.

Surprised but not surprised as UCSC swept Whittier tonight. Not really close, either. UCSC hit 0.381. Don’t sleep on the slugs (my mom told me that growing up). UCSC was led by Gilbert and Taylor with 10 kills each, Sinead Beupain with 18 assists and Samantha Taylor with 15 digs. Whittier had three players with 4 kills (yikes) to lead the team. Della Trimble led the team with 11 assists and Katelyn Popoff led the team with 10 digs. Not a good night for the Poets.

Caltech is up 2-1 as is Puget Sound.

LPU beat Pomona-Pitzer 3-0. The Sagehens were led by Chloe Gill with 6 kills, Adrienne Tong with 13 assists and Lauren Asato with 16 digs.

Puget Sound is going 5-sets, which is what they do on late nights. Them and Whitman. Annoying. Caltech may also be going 5-sets but that’s okay because I think one of them may end up curing cancer one day. (Or get me a flying car that runs on trash.)

It’s around 11 pm right now. And this is a light day compared to Friday and Saturday. My wife has already yelled up twice to come to bed. I really enjoy it when the conferences start playing because it reduces my workload. Still, with all of the technical problems, fun day.

Puget Sound gets the win! They were led by Logan Winn with 11 kills, Sarah Blumenfeld with 16 assists and Abby McLeran with 11 digs.

Ugh. Caltech with a nice comeback in the 5th falls short and lose the match. Service error on the final point after a timeout. The Beavers were led by Hannah Fan with 11 kills, Halle Blend with 32 assists and Megan Wang with 28 digs. Dallas Taylor also had 7 blocks.

All of the matches are done. I’ll add the missing box scores tomorrow.

Late News – Trinity’s match was cancelled due to “health and safety protocols”. Good night for Covid in the West! George Fox has a box score now. They were led by Staton and Robertson with 12 kills each, Kennedy Kibby with assists and Piper Harrop with 11 digs.

Nationally, here’s a look at the ranked teams:

#3 Calvin won two matches (Wheaton and Trine) #4 Emory beat Oglethorpe #5 Carthage beat Lakeland UW-Whitewater upset #9 Chicago #14 Ohio Northern beat Earlham #16 Muskingum beat Ohio Wesleyan #17 Millikin beat Dominican Covenant upset #19 Birmingham-Southern UW-Eau Claire upset #20 Northwestern Wittenberg upset #22 Otterbein

Good night for the UW teams! The BSC loss to Covenant ripples into the West because BSC was going to be a top team that Mary Hardin-Baylor plays. This takes some luster off the match-up. Wittenberg was a bit of an unknown but it appears they came to play this season.

Random Thoughts: Happy opening day 2021!!!!!

First off, the links can be dicey early in the season. The SIDs aren’t in mid-season form. Some confusion on who is doing what and the like. The Trinity video link is iffy as is the Puget Sound video link. I will try to update these today if I think about it. Austin usually has a stream but as of Tuesday (when I’m typing this) they were not published, yet.

Second, remember that Roku and smart TVs have apps from most of the DIII conferences. Search for SCAC (for instance) to see if they are streaming matches there. Not all schools participate from a conference so keep that in mind.

We have a number of NAIA matches scheduled and frankly I had no interest in researching those teams. Still, it will be good to watch the good guys play and, hopefully, win today! (I did notice that Multnomah scrimmaged George Fox and took 3 of 4 from them. We’ll see how that plays out when they play Pacific today.)

Good match with Concordia/Southwestern. Concordia has a small roster but returned most of their starters from the spring. Southwestern lost their starting OH2 but, otherwise, return their starters from last year. Two members of my preseason All-Region team are in this one with Crabtree (Southwestern) and Ghormley (Concordia). Whichever team can stop the other will have a huge leg up. These teams will play again in October.

I said I wasn’t going to really mention the NAIA matches but that Trinity match will be a fun one. Our Lady of the Lake sits right next door to Trinity and typically has a good team.

Dallas/ETBU should give us an early indication on both of these teams. Both teams are trying to reach the next tier in their conferences.

Lewis & Clark/Willamette is a NWC match-up that will not count in the standings. LC has a new coach this season so a good test for him and the team. Both teams played well in the spring. McGinn is a fun watch for Lewis & Clark as is Porter for Willamette. Two really good setters.

UCSC/Whittier is another good one. Whittier has a large roster so it will be interesting to see if they have it all together early. I’m intrigued by Santa Cruz so a victory here will raise some eyebrows (even mine since they are growing back).

Eleven other matches all involving non-DIII programs, which seems like some sort of record for an opening day. Good warm-ups for our guys. In case you didn’t know, these matches do not count in the official NCAA standings. They are part of the secondary criteria used for at-large selections but only if the NCAA wants to mess over a team. The result really doesn’t matter. Who the selection committee wants will matter. Day 1 and I’m already in midseason form!