NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Celebrating an impactful group of seniors in their final home regular season match, the Christopher Newport volleyball team captured a dominant 3-0 victory on Saturday afternoon against Bridgewater College. The Captains handed the the Eagles just their fourth loss of the season while improving to 20-8 overall and extending the fifth-longest active streak of 20-win seasons in NCAA Division III.
With a 25-11, 25-19, 25-23 victory over the Eagles, the Captains became just the fourth team to upend the ODAC foe, who was receiving votes in this week's AVCA/Taraflex Division III national rankings.
CNU has now won 20 matches or more in 27 straight seasons dating back to the 1998 season when Ken Shibuya took over the program and turned a 7-win team into a 20-win team in the span of just one year. Since, the Captains have averaged 28 wins per season including 20+ in every one of head coach
Lindsay Birch's 24 seasons as the head coach. In an instance of apophenia, the Captains have piled up exactly 757 wins during the 27-year streak -- Newport News is located in the 757 area code.
In the Senior Day victory, the Captains spread the ball around with four different players finding the floor for eight kills or more. Rookie
Jasmine Williams led the charge with nine kills on 18 swings and hit .333 in the match. Seniors
Simara Alexander and
Alli Pratt each added eight kills in their final Freeman Center appearance while hitting .429 and .357, respectively. Rounding out the quartet of offensive leaders was junior
Avery Hanly with eight kills and she added seven digs for the Captains.
Defensively, junior transfer
Lanie Goff led the team with 12 digs while
Fielding Croft also had six. Croft had a team-high 19 assists while sophomore setter
Lauren Hobbs added 13.
In the opening set the Captains were able to build an early lead behind a slow start by Bridgewater with five straight attack errors handing the Captains a 7-2 advantage. A kill by Alexander and an ace by another senior,
Samantha Dorn, built the lead to 9-2 before the Eagles got back in the scoring column with a service error. The torrid start to the match continued for CNU as the home team took an 11-point lead with another 5-0 run to go up, 14-3, with kills by Hanly and Pratt punctuating the burst.
CNU coasted through the rest of the first set and ran away with a 25-11 win to take a pivotal early lead in the match against the talented in-state foe. The Eagles managed to correct some of their errors in the second set, which played out much closer than the first. Bridgewater took an early lead and held on until the Captains knotted things up at 10-all. Dorn and Alexander were once again on service as CNU mounted a 7-1 run that turned a two-point deficit into a four-point lead.
From there, Christopher Newport managed to hold onto the lead the remainder of the set despite a back-and-forth run through the middle portion of play. Once the score ran to 22-19, the Captains put together three straight points to finish off the set, 25-19, with kills by Hanly and Williams before a set-clinching error by the Eagles.
Capping off the straight-set win with a strong third set, the Captains never trailed by more than two points and again turned an early deficit into some wiggle room midway through the set. Bridgewater led by one, 9-8, when CNU took control and opened up a six-point lead, 21-15, and again at 22-16. The Eagles put together a valiant comeback, scoring seven of the next nine points including four straight while facing match point, but CNU turned to its freshman star for the winner on the final rally as Williams ripped an sizzling kill to clinch the match, 25-23.
CNU will now turn its attention to postseason play as the Captains travel to Mary Washington for the 2026 Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Championship starting on Friday, November 13. The Captains will learn the official seeding of the tournament on Monday with quarter- and semi-final games played at 11:00, 1:30, and 4:00 p.m. on Friday before the consolation and championship matches on Saturday, November 14. Christopher Newport is seeking a third straight C2C Championship and a berth in the NCAA Tournament for the 19th year in a row.
