Jacksonville, IL 9/3/2022- The Westminster College volleyball team was running on all cylinders after losing just three sets in their first three games. They would face the host Illinois College in the last game of the Illinois College invitational. They would hand the Blue Jays their first loss of the season, beating them 3-1 (25-22,28-30,23-25,25-19). The Blue Jays fall to 3-1 on the season and Illinois College improves to 1-2.
The Blue Jays looked to keep things rolling in the first set. It was close throughout and the Lady Blues tied it six times but could never take the lead away from Westminster. The game was tied at 16-16 when Illinois College committed a service error to give the Jays a one-point lead. Malena Bixby (New Berlin, IL / New Berlin) and Kate Rable (Saint Peters, Mo. / Fort Zumwalt South) got back-to-back kills to extend Westminster's lead to 19-16. They would win the set,25-22.
The Jays seemed to be coasting to another victory when they had a 24-18 lead in the second set. Illinois College would flip the script and came roaring back to take the lead 24-25 after rattling off seven unanswered points. The Jays got it to set point, on two different occasions, but could not score the winning point. The Lady Blues tied it at 28-28 and won the set 30-28 after two straight Westminster attacking errors, one of which was a block by the Illinois College frontline.
The third set saw both teams trading the lead back and forth. There were seven ties and three lead changes. Westminster got off to a 3-0 start, but that was short-lived as the Lady Blues took the lead at 9-8. The Jays wrangled the lead back at 12-11. Illinois College would score four straight points to take a 15-12 lead. The Blue Jays countered with three unanswered points of their own and tied it at 15-15. The two teams would go back and forth and the game tied again at 20-20. They would trade two points for one, and the Lady Blues held on to win the third set 25-23.
The Blue Jays found themselves down 2-1 heading into the fourth set, and it was familiar territory, as they were in the same situation in the game before this one. They would win the fourth and fifth set and were hoping to repeat that here. Things got off to a good start with Westminster going up 3-0. The Lady Blues then scored nine points in a row to take a commanding 9-3 lead. The Jays would regroup and score four straight to make it 9-7. However, Westminster could not get the game closer than two points for the rest of the set. Illinois College would win the set 25-19 and the match 3-1.
Bixby would have a game-high nineteen kills with a .372 kill percentage. Haley Menke (O'Fallon, Mo. / Fort Zumwalt West) had thirteen kills, and Eryka Wanyonyi (Columbia, Mo. / Hickman) had ten kills of her own. Rable had thirty-four assists and four aces. Gracie Henrikson (Athens, IL / Athens) led the team in digs with twenty-one.
The Blue Jays will be back in action on September 9th and 10th when they travel to Memphis, Tennessee to compete in the Rhodes College Tournament.
