Women's Volleyball | 10/20/2015 10:22:00 AM
Tickets | Live Stats vs. New Orleans | VideoTickets | Live Stats vs. Southeastern La. | VideoTickets | Live Stats vs. New Orleans | Video ABILENE – Abilene Christian volleyball and its three-woman senior class of
Madison Hoover,
Jennifer Loerch and
Sarah Siemens will bid a fond farewell to Moody Coliseum and their fans during the Wildcats' upcoming three-match homestand that runs from Thursday to Monday.
ACU, which is 4-1 at home this fall, first will welcome New Orleans Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. followed by a date with Southeastern Louisiana Saturday at 1 p.m. Nicholls comes to town Monday for a 6:30 p.m. home contest that will be the last for ACU's trio of four-year starters.
All three matches will offer live stats and video with the 'Voice of the Wildcats'
Grant Boone handling play-by-play duties for the home finale vs. the Colonels alongside former ACU head coach and recent Hall of Fame Inductee Brek Horn.
Starters from the very beginning of their careers Loerch and Siemens each have appeared in 105 of a possible 106 matches, while Hoover has played in 93 – her junior year cut short 11 matches due to an injury.
Their longevity and talent also have allowed them to claim their places throughout the ACU records book. Loerch started the season with her 1,000th career kill and now she ranks 10th all-time with 1,245 with eight more matches left on the schedule.
Hoover, who two weeks ago received the program's first Southland Conference Defensive Player of the Week award, will likely finish second all-time in digs at ACU. She has 1,563 for her career and needs just 15 more to pass Jessica Mayes for the runner-up spot to leader Kelsie Edwards (1,948).
Hoover's 541 digs as a freshman in 2012 remains the fourth-highest single season total in Wildcat history, and her 38 digs earlier this month vs. Stephen F. Austin are tied for the second most in a single ACU match, joining Grae Grimes and Krista Wright. Angie Palmer set the school's single-match record of 39 digs in 1995 vs. Southern Colorado.
Siemens joined the Wildcats' six-member 3,000-assist club earlier this season and could finish as high as fourth on ACU's all-time list if she continues to average 9.17 assists per set. The Bakersfield, Calif., native who was nominated once again this month for Academic-All America, has 3,325 career assists with 1,123 of those coming during her freshman year.
For her career Siemens has eight matches of 50 or more assists.
The Wildcats (4-17, 4-4) played outstanding during their previous homestand, but couldn't duplicate their winning ways last weekend as they followed a five-set loss at Houston Baptist with a 3-1 defeat at first-place Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (20-4, 8-0 SLC).
The two defeats also snapped a three-match winning streak for the Wildcats and dropped them into eighth place in the 13-team league. Southeastern Louisiana starts the week a half game ahead of ACU at 4-3 (10-11 overall), while New Orleans (12-11, 2-5) and Nicholls (5-14, 0-7) occupy two of three bottom positions.
Loerch led the Wildcats last weekend with a 33.0-point average, hitting .209 to go along with 3.11 kills per set, four blocks and three service aces. Freshmen
Kendall Bosse and
Jacey Smith also averaged better than 2.0 kills per set, while rookie
Lauren Walker blocked the most shots with eight.
Siemens averaged 10.11 assists through the two matches and Hoover dug out 47 attacks for a 5.22 average, keeping them both among the conference leaders. Hoover ranks third in digs with 4.77 and Siemens is sixth with 9.17 assists per set.
Walker's .297 hitting percentage is the ninth best among all Southland players and Loerch's 3.29 kills per set average ranks her fourth.
