Spaay Records 700th Assists, Volleyball Splits Opening Day

Allie Spaay sets up freshman Ali Goc for a kill.

In her first career game freshman outside hitter Ali Goc racked up a team high 12 kills against Coppin State University. Between the Volleyball team’s two games, the second being against Loyola University, Goc totaled 19 kills, 13 digs, five blocks, and four aces.

“I didn’t expect that at all,” Goc said. “But having a setter like Allie Spaay you get great sets every single time so you have to use them.”

With 24 assists in the first game of the season junior setter Spaay passed the 700 assists plateau, and combined with her 29 assists in the team’s second game, she now has 731 career assists, which is 10th all time at UMBC. Spaay also totaled 17 digs between the two games, five blocks, four kills, and two aces.

UMBC opened the season with a sweep of Coppin State (25-16, 25-9, 25-11). UMBC was never really threatened by Coppin State, who were just 0-4 without winning a single set going into the game.

A big reason for UMBC’s success in that game was 15 aces. Freshman Mallory McIntyre recorded a team high five aces in the game while Goc and senior Sabrina Hoeks each totaled four.

“When you serve effectively you can get teams in trouble and you can block some balls,” Coach Ian Blanchard said. His team certainly capitalized on the serves as they recorded 12 assists blocks and one solo block. Iman Kennedy led the team with five blocks and was also second on the team with eight kills.

UMBC did have nine errors off their serves, but that was not something Blanchard was concerned with.

“If you’re going to serve aggressively you’re going to make some errors so you have to make the right balance,” he said. “We don’t have to play the game perfectly to win but we have to play well and control the things you can control.”

Along with having four aces, Hoeks also totaled seven kills and nine digs in the game. Last year Hoeks’ season ended with her second ACL tear, this time it was in her left knee, but she did not look like she lost anything from her game.

“It feels really good [to be back],” she said. “This year is actually a lot better than last year when i came back from my first ACL [injury]. I wasn’t actually planning on playing front row until preseason but I just started getting back, getting back into my serves, it just feels good to be out there again.

Despite missing the end of last season Hoeks totaled 29 aces in 67 sets for a 0.43 ace/set average, which was the highest on the team. It was a slight concern whether her serve would be a dominate this year as it would be more difficult for her to jump and while it wasn’t perfect, that doesn’t look to be any sort of a problem.

“My rhythm is a little off still,” she said. “I’m keeping it a little lower but I’ve been working on it and the speeds actually been going up the last week or so, getting into the 60s.”

UMBC did not have the same fortune in their second game of the day however as they themselves were swept by Loyola University (25-20, 27-25, 25-23).

Kennedy lead the team with eight kills while both Goc and Hoeks had seven. One area that really suffered in their second game was serves. After having pin-point accuracy on their serves in the first game the team had just six aces.