The Shippensburg University volleyball team rallied to win the final two sets Friday in its opening match of the weekend at the Frostburg State tournament, as the Raiders posted a 3-2 victory over Walsh (Ohio) inside a toasty Bobcat Arena. Set scores were 25-21, 22-25, 22-25, 25-17 and 15-4.
Shippensburg (4-1) committed just three attack errors in the final two sets after tallying 22 in the first three sets to flip the script against Walsh (2-2). Spanning the fourth and fifth sets, SU hit .434 from the floor. It was the first meeting between the two teams since 2019 and the second straight to go five sets.
For the first time in eight years, five Raiders finished with double-digit kills in a match. Sophomore
Elise Bragg finished with 14 kills and eight digs and hit .217. Junior
Clara Wildermuth matched her career high with 13 kills; she hit .312 from the floor and delivered a career-high five block assists.
Senior
Natalya Montague, redshirt-sophomore
Riley Blank and senior
Hailey Cappleman each contributed 10 kills. Montague had just one error over 25 attempts, resulting in a .360 hitting percentage. She added two block assists.
Cappleman had a career day defensively at the net – recording career highs of seven block assists and nine total blocks. She also hit .148 from the floor, recorded five digs and served one of SU's eight aces.
Blank posted double-digit kills for the second time this season and in her career, hitting .154 from the floor to go along with two block assists.
Both of SU's setters once again recorded double-doubles with assists and digs. Junior
Jaiden Anderson recorded a career-high 31 assists and matched her career high with 14 digs. Freshman
Molly Seifert established a new career high of 27 assists and delivered 12 digs.
SU's 67 assists as a team are its most in a match since Sept. 28, 2024 vs. Shepherd.
Sophomore
Augusta DeVos contributed a career-high seven kills; she entered Friday with eight total kills through five career matches (five of those kills came last weekend against West Virginia Wesleyan). DeVos sealed the first set for the Raiders with a kill and hit .130 from the floor.
Senior
Kylie Snyder had a strong close to the match – she ripped her first kill of the day to close out the fourth set and then matched Blank in the decisive fifth set with a team-high three kills.
The dynamic defensive duo of senior
Shay Kolivoski and junior
Shea Stevens combined for 39 digs from the back row. Kolivoski's team-high 26 digs marked the 32nd time in her career that she has recorded 20 or more digs in a match. Stevens's 13 digs mark the third time this season she has recorded double-digit digs in a match.
Shippensburg began its comeback with an efficient fourth set in which the Raiders swung .316 from the floor and committed just three attack errors. With the score 15-12 in its favor, SU scored seven of the next eight points to take control and even the match.
In the fifth set, Shippensburg ripped 11 kills without an error, hitting an incredible .733 from the floor. The Raiders closed the match by scoring the final eight points; highlighted by a 7-0 service run from Kolivoski. It began with three straight kills by Blank and included two kills from Snyder.
Overall, SU served eight aces (three by Seifert) while only allowing two by Walsh. The Raiders totaled 69 kills – 15 more than the Cavaliers – and both teams recorded 89 digs. Walsh out-blocked the Raiders 12-11.
Shippensburg will play twice on Saturday, beginning at 11 a.m. with a playoff rematch against Pitt-Johnstown before returning to action at 4 p.m. against the host Bobcats.
Notes: The last match in which SU had five players post 10 or more kills was Nov. 2, 2018 in a 3-2 win at Lock Haven. The five Raiders to achieve the feat that night were Samantha Webber (18), Alana Pergine (12), Morgan DeFloria (12), Gabriella Johnson (11) and Kendall Johnson (10).
