University of Scranton Athletics issued the following announcement on Nov. 5.
After a four-set victory at Elizabethtown on Wednesday, The No. 3 seed University of Scranton volleyball team (25-6) will battle top seeded and No. 9 Juniata (27-1) in the Landmark Conference Championship match on Saturday night at Memorial Gymnasium in Huntingdon, Pa with action getting underway at 7 p.m.
The winner of Saturday’s match will earn the Landmark’s automatic bid to the 2021 NCAA Division III Tournament with the field of 64 set to be announced in a live selection show on NCAA.com on Monday afternoon at 12:30 p.m.
Admission to Saturday’s championship match is $7 for adults and $4 for minors ages 10-17 and seniors 62 and older. Children ages nine and under are admitted free of charge, as are all Landmark Conference students, faculty and staff with their school ID.
Tickets will be available for purchase at Memorial Gymnasium with cash only.
This marks the third all-time Landmark Championship match appearance for the Royals as they also took on Juniata in 2007 and 2017.
Scranton dropped the first set by a score of 25-16 on Wednesday before taking the final three sets in a 3-1 win over the second seeded Elizabethtown Blue Jays in the semifinal matchup. Junior Carah Vitkus (Mahopac, N.Y./Mahopac) led the Royals with 14 kills in the win, while classmate Caileigh Cox (Randolph, N.J./Randolph) added 36 assists and 11 digs. Elsewhere for the Royals, senior Eryn Boken (South Pasadena, Calif./Westridge School for Girls) and sophomore Stephanie Margolies (Westfield, N.J./Westfield) had eight kills apiece.
In Wednesday’s other semifinal, the Eagles rolled past Susquehanna (25-13, 25-19, 25-12) to advance to the championship match. Lily Podolan tallied 13 kills in the win for Juniata and Olivia Foley contributed 37 assists and 10 digs.
Both teams are regionally ranked in the latest NCAA Region V rankings that were unveiled earlier this week with Juniata sitting at No. 2 and Scranton sitting at No. 5.
The Royals feature a trio of players who have tallied more than 200 kills apiece in Margolies (294), Boken (270) and Vitkus (234). Margolies ranks fourth in the Landmark in that category and Boken ranks in the top five in the conference in hitting percentage (.325), blocks per set (0.94) and service aces per set (0.65).
Cox went over the 1,000 mark in Wednesday’s win over the Blue Jays and now has 1,013 on the season, which leads the conference and is also the 10th most in a single season in program history.
Juniata is led offensively by Victoria Taylor with 254 kills, while Foley has contributed in multiple areas with 883 assists and 280 digs on the year. Foley tops the conference in assists per set at 10.39 and Kiona Sky Rousset-Hernandez is third in the Landmark in both digs (463) and digs per set (5.32).
For those fans who are unable to make the trip to Huntingdon, click this link for a live stream of Saturday’s match and click here for live stats.
Original source can be found here.
