November 14, 2009 - The Hillsdale College volleyball team achieved another first Saturday afternoon.

The Chargers won a GLIAC Tournament Semifinal match at home for the first time ever, defeating a red-hot Ashland University team 3-1 before more than 500 fans at Jesse Philips Arena.

Hillsdale (22-7) advances to its second conference champinship match in three years, and will host Saginaw Valley State University at 2 p.m. Sunday. SVSU (21-8) defeated Northern Michigan 3-0 in the other semifinal match.

The Chargers played extraordinary defense against one of the hottest teams in the GLIAC entering the tournament. Ashland defeated Hillsdale the last time the two teams met, back on Oct. 24. This marks the second time in two GLIAC tournament matches Hillsdale has beaten a team it lost to earlier in the season.

The Chargers forced the Eagles into 16 attack errors in the last two sets of the match. Part of that came from Hillsdale's defense forcing the match into a number of long rallies. The points resulting from those long rallies seemed to go Hillsdale's way more often as the match went along.

As a team, Hillsdale had 73 digs in the match, third-most in a four-set match this season. Junior Sydney Dow, who was presented with her Libero of the Year award between the semifinal matches, was brilliant on defense with 25 digs. Four players had 10 or more digs in the match, including 15 from sophomore Morgan Podkul, 13 from sophomore Ashlee Crowder and 10 by sophomore Brogan Wells.

Offensively, Hillsdale hit well over .300 in the first and fourth sets. Ashland committed 10 service errors, something that really hurt the Eagles in the first two sets of the match.

Crowder and junior Amanda Bigney each had 13 kills to lead the team. Sophomore setter Apryl Schmucker played an outstanding overall match, with nine kills, 39 assists, five digs and two block assists. Sophomore Clara Leutheuser added eight kills.

Click on the link below for the stats from Saturday's match.

Chargers 3, Ashland 1