Volleyball

November 5, 2007

WATERBURY, Conn.-For the seventh consecutive season, the Post University women's volleyball team will vie for a chance to garner a Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference (CACC) Championship, as it will host Nyack College on Tuesday evening in the Drubner Center.

Admission for the match is free; however, the Post University Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SACC) will be accepting donations at the door for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  

The Eagles (8-23, 8-9 CACC) are the number-two seed in the North Division, and will host Nyack (9-15, 8-9 CACC) who is the number-three seed in the North. The teams split the two regular season matches, with each team winning on their respective home courts.

Nyack won the first meeting on September 25, 3-2 (27-30, 27-30, 30-28, 30-28, 15-12) at the Bowman Center, and the Eagles took the second meeting of the season 3-1 (30-25, 34-32, 25-30, 30-18) in the Drubner Center on October 11.

This will be the first-ever meeting between the two schools in the CACC Tournament. The match will also be the first CACC Tournament match for Head Coach Mike Brienza, who is in his first season, as the Eagle mentor.

Post is led by junior Kerry Smith, who capped off a stellar regular season, leading the team in kills with 347, and digs with 385. She enters the match needing eight kills to reach the 1,000-kill plateau in her collegiate career. She has already eclipsed the 1,000-dig plateau in September against East Stroudsburg University.

Freshman Natasha Loving is second on the team with 300 kills, which is good for 2.91 per game for the freshman from the Bronx. Senior Vicky Ducharme rounds out the top three for the Eagles with 186 kills on the season.

Senior Desere Obregon has 920 assists on the season, for an 8.93 per game average. Earlier this season, she eclipsed the 2,000-asssit mark, and has 2,304 career helpers heading into the match with the Warriors on Tuesday.

Ducharme is also second on the team in digs with 260 (2.63 per game). In the first meeting of the season with the Warriors, she recorded her 1,000^th collegiate dig with 17 in the match. She needs only 14 to reach 1,200 in her career.

Nyack is led by Wendy Paige who has 206 kills. Taneisha Cantave has 157 kills, and Lacey McCabe has 107 kills. Tara Leegwater has 483 assists, while Colleen Weidman leads the team with 328 digs. McCabe has 214 digs and Leegwater has 204 digs for Nyack this year.

The winner of the Post-Nyack match will advance to the CACC semifinals on Friday evening at USP. The semifinals will cross-over as the highest remaining seed in the North will face the lowest remaining seed in the South, and the highest seed in the South will face the lowest seed in the North. The semifinal winners will meet in the CACC Championship match on Saturday at 1 p.m.

Bloomfield College is the number-one seed in the North and will face number-four Felician College on Tuesday. In the South, number-one seed Georgian Court University will host number-four seed USP, and number-two seed Philadelphia University will host number-three seed Holy Family University. All quarterfinal matches will be played on Tuesday evening.

For more information on the CACC Volleyball Championships, please logon to http://www.caccathletics.org/.