Pepperdine Women’s Volleyball swept the Santa Clara Broncos 3-0 Oct. 12,at Firestone Fieldhouse. This is the Waves’ 10th straight win putting them 11-6 on the season.
After a 1-6 start, Pepperdine continues to turn its season around with a three-set sweep of Santa Clara for their fifth straight sweep. Junior outside/opposite hitter Grace Chillingworth led the charge on offense, followed by senior middle block Meg Brown and senior outside/opposite hitter Emma Ammerman with 18, 12 and eight kills respectively.
“Morale has been great,” graduate libero Riley Patterson said. “We’re super close, super connected. It feels just like family. The culture on our team is amazing, and that’s what’s helping us.”
The Waves and Broncos came out ready to play and dueled point for point to start the match. This was until Pepperdine scored four straight points to make the score 14-8 and take command of the first set.
With a 24-18 score, Chillingworth got a kill to secure a first-set win.
“Grace [Chillingworth] does so much for our team,” Head Coach Scott Wong said. “Outsider hitters in general have to do it all. They have to pass, and set, and hit, and block, serve, and she — night in, night out —has been really reliable from day one two years ago.”
The Waves came out firing to start the second set. With senior outside hitter Birdie Hendrickson at the service line, the Waves scored eight unanswered points to start the set. Pepperdine won the second set 25-16.
“Birdie [Hendrickson] went back and served a bunch of balls and put a lot of pressure on Santa Clara,” Wong said. “When we’re serving well and our offense is always pretty solid, good things happen.”
Yet again, the Waves came out strong as they started the third set 3-0. Pepperdine started to be in complete control of the set as they took a 10-5 lead.
After going point for point, the Broncos started to get momentum on their side after they went on a 4-0 run to pull within one of the Waves. Pepperdine then called a timeout and got the momentum back on their side with an 11-3 run.
“Keeping the ball in more with our shots, maybe going to their secondary shot because we were stopping their first shots,” Ammerman said. “So, once we talked about that, we were ready to adjust and win.”
With a 24-15 score, Santa Clara committed an attack error to end the third set and secure the win for Pepperdine. Ammerman said the team’s offensive performance has played a huge part in their win streak.
“Our offense was just on fire,” Ammerman said. “We have so many options it’s hard to predict who we’re going to set, and whoever gets set gets the job done. We’re really executing at a high level right now.”
Pepperdine is in first place in the West Coast Conference with a 7-0 record in conference play. The Waves’ next games will be against Loyola Marymount on Oct. 19, and San Diego on Oct. 21. Both are on the road and are second and third in the WCC respectively, according to WCC.
“This is the best of the best of our conference, so we’re excited to showcase we’re up there too,” Ammerman said.
Wong said the team needs to play to the level they know they are capable of playing to be successful against these two teams.
“We want to be a great serving team,” Wong said. “We want to be a tough team in every way with our ability to not let teams off the hook with errors on our side. If we play free, play hard, play, good things will happen.”
__________________
Follow the Graphic on Twitter @PeppGraphic
Contact Tony Gleason on Twitter (@tony__gleason) or via email: anthony.gleason@pepperdine.edu
