FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- The Christopher Newport volleyball team advanced to the conference championship for an opportunity to defend its reign as the two-time defending champion of the Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference after rolling to a 3-0 win at #4-seed Mary Washington (15-10) on Friday evening. The Captains picked up a straight set win, 25-20, 25-16, 25-23, against the host Eagles and will face off against #3-seed UC Santa Cruz in the final at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday.
Junior
Avery Hanly led the way for the Captains with a career-best performance hitting .600 in the semifinal win. With 11 kills and 11 digs, she registered her fifth double-double of the season and has caught fire at the end of the season with her third in the last four matches. Hanly hit .667 once in her sophomore campaign on nine swings, but the effort on Friday was the most efficient effort in any game she logged more than 10 total attempts.
Against the Eagles, the Captains avenged a regular season loss to earn the series win in three matches against the C2C foe. CNU advances to its third straight conference title bout and for the 11th time in 13 seasons since joining the league in 2013.
Mary Washington secured a spot in the semifinal after defeating Regent in the day's first match of three with a quarterfinal victory. The Captains raced out to an early lead against the Eagles, playing in their second match of the day, but the hosts rallied and kept things close including leading in each of the three sets.
In the opening set, the Captains got out to a blistering start and led by six, 11-5, before the first timeout of the match. The Eagles rebounded after the break and went on an 8-1 run of their own to teeter in front, 14-13, but CNU answered to re-take the lead, 20-16. From there, CNU held off the Eagles to capture a 25-20 win in the first set.
Early on, it was junior
Carley Coghill with a pair of kills to spark the Captains offense and she added a block with senior
Simara Alexander. Alexander finished a heavy swing in the first-set run and the Captains took advantage of a number of Mary Washington errors. After surrendering the lead, CNU turned back to the middle of the floor where Alexander and Hanly picked apart the Mary Washington defense.
Lauren Hobbs added an ace and it was a Coghill kill that stretched the lead back to four, 20-16. Finishing off the first set, the Captains got two more kills by Coghill, one by
Samantha Dorn, and an emphatic finish with the clinching swing by Alexander.
The second set started in favor of the home team, as the Eagles built a similar lead to the Captains in the first, 11-6. Like her counterpart, head coach
Lindsay Birch triggered a timeout after the early run and things immediately swung back in favor of the Captains. After the break, CNU scored 12 of the next 14 points with the senior duo of Dorn and Alexander handling the duties behind the service line. Both picked up one ace in their respective runs while the offense caught fire for CNU including seven of eight CNU points being earned without a Mary Washington miscue.
Alli Pratt had two kills,
Jasmine Williams added one, and Hanly enjoyed a torrid spurt with three kills in a five-point stretch.
The dominant run would grow to a 16-3 advantage in the middle of the second set that saw CNU open up an eight-point lead, 22-14. At the end of the run,
Lauren Hobbs, Dorn, and Williams closed out the second set win, 25-16, with three straight kills.
Though the second set could have put the Eagles on their heels, the home team put up a valiant fight against the Captains in the clinching third set. Neither team led by more than four points in the final frame and once Mary Washington closed to 6-4, neither team led by more than two points the rest of the way. Back and forth, the Eagles tried to scratch out a win and led by one, 23-22, with little left to play. After another CNU timeout, though, the Captains captured the win on an error, an ace by
Maddie Hanes, and a combo block to close it out by Alexander and Coghill.
In addition to Hanly's double-double, the Captains also got nine kills by Coghill with four blocks and six kills by Williams, also with four blocks. Alexander logged seven kills and was in on three blocks while Dorn chipped in six kills and an ace for the Captains. Facilitating the offense, setters
Lauren Hobbs and
Fielding Croft poured in 20 and 17 assists, respectively.
As a team, CNU hit .320 while holding the home team to just .108 from the floor. The Captains logged 8.0 total blocks and 40 digs in the three-set victory.
It will be the first time that Christopher Newport and Santa Cruz square off with the league's title on the line. The winning team will secure the league's automatic berth into the NCAA Division III Women's Volleyball Championship. The match will tip off at 3:00 p.m. with the all-time series between the two teams favoring the Captains, 8-5. Live stats and a live video webcast will be available online.
