BLOG: Libero out does not affect the Lumberjacks in the win

  For senior, defense specialist, Hannah Hill, Saturday’s game against Weber State University was a great hi light for her senior career. Libero, Stacia Williams was out of the game due to being sick, in which Hill stepped up into her position and worked to keep up with Williams.

  In a typical game, Hill would take back row for senior, middle hitter, Taylor Stephens, serving and playing specialist; instead she stayed back row throughout the whole game, moving forward in the matches, proving her full potential for the team. Hill played full round back row for Payton Bock and Stephens.

  “In practice I’m the second string libero and you step up to the plate when need be,” said Hannah Hill. “As a DS I have on specific role, and my team trusts me a lot with it. There was a lot more pressure as a libero, but it was awesome.”

  Hannah Hill was not the only player who had a great game. Senior Sydney Kemper, sophomore Lauren Jacobsen and junior Janae Vander Ploeg stuck their ground, engaging in strong athleticism as well, placing self records for their college careers.

  The game consisted of a great amount of blocks, in which senior Sydney Kemper held a career-high tying nine, setting the highest amount by the Lumberjacks this season. All together, the game was vivid with the amount of blocks that that the team contributed to the game. There was a total of thirty blocks throughout the game.

   NAU middles, Taylor Stephens and junior, Payton Bock contributed a high amount of blocks as well, totaling up to seven, holding the Wildcats to a .096 percentage.

  Kemper hit a total of 20 kills: four in match one, seven in match two and nine in match three. Vander Ploeg had a total of 18 kills in which she scored three in the first match, five in the second match and ten in the third match. As for Lauren Jacobsen, fans watched as the six foot sophomore power housed hit after hit against the Wildcats totaling 25 kills in all three matches. Jacobsen had four kills in match one, nine kills in match two and twelve kills in match three.

“I think we focused more on what we needed to do to be successful,” said Kemper. “I think it all leads into building focus, building energy towards future matches. Today some of my goals were mostly blocking, staying outside of the block, and jump in towards the court and not jump out and get tooled when I’m blocking.”

  Sophomore Lauren Jacobsen hit at a season-best with an average .450. Junior, Janae Vander Ploeg also added in a good amount of kills and is now 13 kills short of a total of 1,000 kills in her college career. This made her the 12^th player in NAU’s school history to accomplish this high scoring amount. 

  “They were just swinging pretty free and doing what they wanted,” said Coach Ken Murphy.

“Once we got into rhythm blocking wise, I thought we controlled them in the match a lot. It was a number thing that we got a lot of, but we just controlled the match with that. I thought offensively we were pretty solid all night. We just started slowing down some of their offense when we were blocking.”