Springfield, Ohio — It was the visiting team's day for the third-straight season of MCVL Volleyball Tournament play. The Trine Thunder played a tremendous championship match against the host-Wittenberg Tigers, taking a 3-1 victory and, with it, the league's automatic berth to the NCAA Division III Volleyball Championship. Trine will enter next week's NCAA regional play with a 19-6 overall record after a tie-for-second-place finish in the regular season (7-2). Wittenberg fell to 19-9.
Trine came out strong with matching 25-19 victories in the first two sets. The Tigers fought back in set three with a 25-20 win. The Thunder then saw leads of 9-2 and 14-6 vanish as the Tigers eventually got within a point, 21-20, with four straight points. The last two came on service aces by Tom Supan. That was as close as Wittenberg got as four of the metch's next five points came on a kill from Kevin Boncaro, two attack errors, and, on match point, a kill for Ted Hofmeister. The 25-21 win set off the celebration for Trine and its head coach, Will Dowdy.
Stat leaders for the Thunder were Boncaro with a team-high 14 kills (.238 hitting percentage), Hofmeister with 12 kills (.212), and Matt Stillman with a team-high .467 hitting percentage and nine kills. Hunter Haas was voted the tournament's MVP. The senior libero was the four-time MCVL Defensive Player of the Year and a four-time first team all-league selection. Today he had 18 digs and was an adept passer all match long. Wittenberg was led by Eli Halverson's team-high 15 kills (.333 hitting percentage).
In addition to Haas, the rest of the All-Tournament Team was made up of his Trine teammates Kevin Boncaro and Nick Woolley, Halverson and Michael Yurk from Wittenberg, Daniel Latham from Baldwin Wallace, and Jack McClure from Mount Union.
In yesterday's first semifinal, Trine defeated Baldwin Wallace, 3-2. Boncaro led the Thunder with 22 kills (.383 hitting percentage), while Latham had 17 kills for the Yellow Jackets. Wittenberg upended Mount Union in the second semi, 3-1. Yurk led the Tigers with 23 kills, and McClure had 13 kills.
The NCAA championship field will be announced Monday, April 15th at 10:00a ET. This year's national semifinals and final will be held April 26 and 28 at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.