Sept. 3, 2005
The freshman trio of Laura DeMichelis, Talisa Kellogg and Callie Miller combined for 47 kills to lead the No. 20 Georgia Tech volleyball team to a 3-1 (30-26, 36-38, 30-26, 30-24) win over Winthrop in its final match at the Four Points University Plaza Wildcat Classic in Tucson, Arizona. With the win, the Yellow Jackets improve to 1-2 on the season while the Eagles fall to 2-3.
The Yellow Jackets will return to action Friday when they take on George Washington in the Georgia Tech/Renaissance Invitational at 7:30 p.m.
“It feels really good to get our first win of the season, and Winthrop made us work for it,” said head coach Bond Shymansky. “I was very pleased, though, with how our team responded when Winthrop made runs at us. We received some key leadership tonight from our captains Abby, Jennifer and Lindsey and it was evident in the statistics at the end of the match. I thought in game four we did a fantastic job of cutting down on our hitting errors and converting on offense like we are capable of doing. We certainly would have liked to have won a few more matches this weekend, but at the same time we are young and did some really good things and our freshmen showed some great signs of promise and we have a lot to look forward to this season.”
Tech’s offense improved dramatically as the match progressed. After hitting only .153 as a team after three games, the Jackets hit .405 in the fourth and final game to end the match with a .211 hitting percentage. Abby Showers led the way, hitting .455 while recording five kills and zero hitting errors. She was followed by Miller who had a match-high 17 kills and hit .400, while Kellogg and DeMichelis each posted 15 kills for Tech. Ulrike Stegemann chipped in nine kills and hit .238 while Lindsey Laband notched three kills in addition to her season-high 54 assists.
The difference in the match was at the net, as the Jackets had 15 blocks to Winthrop’s four. Miller led the way, recording a career-best 11 block assists while Kellogg recorded seven blocks in the match and Stegemann and Laband each had three block assists.
Defensively the Jackets were led by Jennifer Randall who had 21 digs, only two shy of her career high, followed by Laband who recorded 13 and Showers who notched 10.
Winthrop was led by Tori Grafeman who recorded 16 kills in the match, followed by Mary Hock who had 15.
