ADRIAN, Mich. – The Trine University women's volleyball team dropped their Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) First Round match on Tuesday night 3-1 at Adrian College to put an end to the 2022 season.
The Thunder finish the year with a record of 12-11 and have been above .500 for four consecutive seasons. Adrian improves their record to 12-9 and advance to the MIAA Semifinal Round where they will face the top seed Calvin University.
Slow starts put Trine behind the eight ball at the start of the match. The Thunder trailed 6-1 at the beginning of the first set and trailed by as many as 12 in the first. Back-to-back kills by Catherine Dobies kept the visitors afloat temporarily, but Adrian went on a 6-0 run late to go up 24-12 and held off a rally to win the set by a score of 25-17.
The Bulldogs would once again go up big and force a Thunder timeout in the second set with an 8-1 advantage. Once more, the home team would find themselves up 12 points, this time at 18-6. Some errors from the Bulldogs allowed Trine to gain some momentum, but ultimately it was Adrian who steamed ahead with a 25-14 set victory.
The Thunder turned the corner in set number three and a block from Madison Dominick and Francesca Queary gave the team their first lead of the night at 6-5. Kills by Dominick and Olivia Jolliffe helped Trine to extend their lead in the middle stages of the third. A solo block from Anna Loughrey and kill by Jocelynn Nicholls set up Jolliffe for the match-clinching score at 25-18. Trine hit .258 in the third with 14 kills, a team-high in both categories.
Cassidy Victor got the scoring started in the fourth and an ace by Dobies forced Adrian into a timeout at 8-4 Thunder. The Bulldogs rattled off eight points in a row to lay claim to the lead at 13-10. Loughrey was able to cap a four-point Trine run to retake the lead at 19-18 and an error put them up again at 22-21, but the final four points of the night were converted by Adrian in the loss, 25-22.
Jolliffe, Dobies and Victor all led the way on offense with 10 kills each and Jolliffe recorded her 500th career kill in the fourth set. Kailee Cornell was the main catalyst with 22 assists in the match. Rachel Campbell was the team leader with 16 digs of the Thunder's 70 total.