The Matador women’s volleyball team will head to Honolulu, Hawaii to participate in the Waikiki Beach Marriott Volleyball Challenge hosted by the University of Hawaii, beginning Sept. 8.
The Matadors (2-4) will play tonight against No. 10 UCLA at 4:30 p.m. On Friday the team will play No. 7 Hawaii at 7 p.m., and then on Saturday finish up tournament play against Cincinnati, scheduled for 4:30 p.m.
The Bruins (3-0) opened their season in Reno, Nevada, participating in the Sand/SBC tournament, making easy work of their opponents and winning all three matches
The No. 7 UH Rainbow Wahine (2-3) are coming off wins over No. 8 USC and Western Michigan, with a loss to No. 4 Penn State that ended a 39-match home winning streak. UH was able to sustain their top-10 ranking even though they dropped three out of five games.
The Cincinnati Bearcats (1-2) struggled in their opening weekend of play, winning only one game in the New Mexico State tournament. The team’s only victory was against Texas-Pan American in straight sets sandwiched between losses to host New Mexico State and Tulsa.
CSUN is coming off a challenging weekend winning one game and losing two in the Pepperdine Classic. They were, however, able to beat tournament host No. 25 Pepperdine.
This season, the Matadors are led on offense by freshman Jenn Probert with 80 kills and Darla Donaldson who has 70 kills. The majority of assists come from freshman Kayla Wright, who has set 266.
CSUN has received quality serving from Val Kepler, who has notched eight aces and Harmony Burdine, Kelley Hanson, and Amy Hultner, who all have five. Jamie Crawford leads the team in digs this season with 149, averaging 5.73 per match.
Fourth year head coach Jeff Stork leads a young Matador team operating with four juniors, three sophomores and ten freshmen. The Matadors will need to play their best volleyball if they hope to sneak away with a winning tournament record.
The game against Hawaii can be heard at uhathletics.hawaii.edu/broadcast.html.
Malik Lee can be reached at malik.lee@csun.edu.
