The Iowa Central Volleyball traveled to East Peoria, Illinois Wednesday morning to face a ranked opponent in #16 Illinois Central for their opening match.  The 9th ranked Tritons came out of the gates swinging as all 6 Triton front row players opened up set 1 with at least 1 kill.  Iowa Central served extremely tough with 5 aces and 0 errors for the opening set.  Tritons won set 1 25-15. Illinois Central would regroup in set 2, winning 20-25, but not before the Tritons stormed back to take sets 3 and 4 25-12 and 25-10.  

Abby Lohrmann spread the offense with her 42 assists with freshman Amaya Finley having a great debut with 16 kills on a .452 hiting efficiency.  Libby Zorn added 11 kills (.300 hitting eff.), Kayla Faldet had 9 kills (.368 hitting eff.), and Asarar Gony had 8 kills (.261 hitting eff.). 

Serving and defense were a force for the Tritons as the Cougars were playing out of system for much of the match.  Iowa Central had 9 aces compared to just 2 for the Cougars as freshman Karolayne Santos led the team with 5 aces.  Iowa Central reached triple digits in the dig category with Hannah Murray's 21 digs and Abby Lohrmann's 20 digs leading the way.  The Tritons also had 12 blocks with Kayla Faldet notching 7 blocks, Asarar Gony with 4, and Karolayne Santos with 4.

"With so much experience on this team, we really wanted to challenge our players with some tough opponents right out of the gate.  I really like how this team rose to the challenge and played a really clean, efficient match to open up the year.  I thought we made some really high level plays, and it's great to see this team start to put the pieces together.  We have a lot of high expectations for ourselves and our players took some big steps in the right direction tonight.  I'm excited to see where this bunch ends up!"  said Head Coach Sara Horn.    

The Tritons return to action on Friday and Saturday at the Waubonsee Invitational.