By: Zachary Worstell (zdw001@marietta.edu)
As of Tuesday, September 10th, the Marietta College Women’s Volleyball team is ranked No. 22 in the country from the latest weekly American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) poll release. This is the team’s first ever appearance in a Top 25 national poll. This honor was achieved by the team’s dominating performances in their first two tournaments of the season.
The Pioneer’s season started with a visit to Alliance, Ohio, where they participated in the Mount Union Invitational. The result was the same as last year, as the Pioneer’s left Alliance with a 3-0 record. These wins came against the University of Rochester, Albion College, and Calvin University. At the time, Calvin University was ranked No. 18 in the country and is currently ranked 17th.
The following weekend, the Pioneers traveled to Pittsburgh for the Carnegie Mellon Quad. The first match was against the University of Scranton where Marietta took the first three sets. Marietta also took the first three sets against Westminster College including a 25-8 victory in the first set. The Pioneers finished the weekend and continued their six-game undefeated streak by taking three out of four sets against Carnegie Mellon University.
This weekend the Pioneers headed to Cincinnati for the Charlie Wrublewski Invitational against Earlham College and host Mount St. Joseph University. Marietta made quick work of Earlham taking three straight sets. The Pioneers then faced their toughest challenge of the year. As they exchanged sets in close scoring matchups with Mt. St. Joseph resulting in the Pioneer’s first game 5 of the season. Fortunately, Marietta started out with a quick 7-0 lead and a final kill by Fellers resulted in a 15-3 victory for the Pios to continue their perfect season with an 8-0 record. The success found during the Wrublewski Invitational will hopefully increase their ranking in the next AVCA poll.
In these early season tournaments, Marietta has only dropped five sets in the first eight matches. Senior Maggie Fellers was able to record her 1000th career kill during this stretch and was named the OAC Offensive Player of the Week earlier this month. Junior Emory Spitler also eclipsed over 2,000 career assists and was named the Mount Union Invitational MVP after the first tournament of the season.
The Pios next challenge is a matchup on Tuesday at Bethany College (4-6) at 7:00p.m. Afterwards, Marietta hosts their Marietta Tri-Match Invitational on Saturday, September 21st. During their home opener they will face Case Western Reserve University (12-0) at 1:00p.m. and then Wittenberg University (5-0) at 5:00p.m.
