The Owls’ volleyball team opened its season this past weekend by hosting the Kennesaw State Invitational Friday and Saturday, which included the University of Missouri, the University of Pittsburgh and Liberty University.
KSU played its first game against UMO, who came into the contest ranked No. 30 according to the American Volleyball Coach’s Association. This was a highly anticipated match that did not disappoint the over 1,300 fans. KSU was up 7-4 before the Tigers rallied back to spoil their upset bid by winning the fifth set 15-10 and winning the match 3-2.
Although KSU was not able to pull off the upset, coach Keith Schunzel and his players were happy with their performance after facing a tough opponent.
“We played our heart out,” KSU outside hitter Sydni Shelton said. “Yeah, we’re mad, we should have won. But playing with girls like that is just going to make [us] better.”
Schunzel mirrored Shelton’s comments, disappointed by not pulling out the win, but grateful for how well his team competed against the Tigers.
“There’s not a whole lot of negatives about that match other than we had some opportunities that we missed,” Schunzel said. “We put ourselves in a position to win the match and we just couldn’t finish it.”
Following the match against UMO, the Owls hosted Liberty University at noon on Saturday before playing the University of Pittsburgh at 7 p.m.
After a spirited effort the night before, KSU opened up the contest slow, dropping the first set 25-21. The Owls would spring to life in the second set, however, overcoming a late deficit to win the set 26-24 before taking the next two sets easily to cruise to a 3-1 match win.
“It wasn’t a super clean game, but we played hard and we ended up pulling out some pretty great stuff,” Schunzel said.
The late game against Pittsburgh was by far the least contested game of the weekend for KSU. The Panthers quickly pounced on the Owls, winning the contest in a 3-0 sweep: 25-16, 25-20, 25-19.
“We knew this was going to be a challenge coming into the weekend,” Schunzel said. “We grinded hard against a good Liberty team this morning and ran out of juice mentally and physically against a really good Pittsburgh team. We learned a lot about ourselves this weekend.”
Top performers from the weekend include:
- Sydni Shelton, who led with 27 kills and 10 digs
- Anaiah Boyer, who had 19 kills and two assists
- Amariah Boyer, who had 19 kills and 11 blocks
- Kristi Pedimonte, who lead with 92 assists, 16 digs, five kills and two service aces
- Liesl Engelbrecht, who had 18 kills, 11 blocks and lead with four service aces
The volleyball team heads out on the road to play Auburn (0-2) on Tuesday before traveling to San Marcos, Texas next weekend to play another tournament. The Owls play the University of Tulsa at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, followed by Texas State University at 8 p.m. KSU then goes up against Stephen F. Austin University on Saturday at 1 p.m.
