The Bowling Green Falcons’ volleyball team got their first conference win of the season this past weekend. On Friday, the Falcons hosted the Ohio Bobcats, resulting in a defeat. However, a game against Kent State on Saturday resulted in a victory for the Falcons.
On Friday, the Falcons fell three sets to none to the Ohio University Bobcats. After losing 25-19, 28-6 and 28-6, Bowling Green kept the match close throughout, despite not winning a set. Jelena Sunjic led the team in kills, with a total of 14 kills. Isabel Kovacic also contributed with 11 kills. Madeline Garda led the team with 11 digs. It was an even matchup, as the Falcons posted more kills at 47, compared to Ohio’s 45. Bowling Green’s biggest flaws of the games were errors and hitting percentage. The Falcons recorded 19 errors compared to Ohio’s 11. The Falcons posted a hitting percentage of only .233, while the Bobcats posted .301. The Bobcats were able to just outlast the Falcons in a tight battle between MAC opponents. With the win for Ohio, the Bobcats improved to 7-9 and 3-1 in MAC conference play. For Bowling Green, the defeat set the Falcons at 10-6 and 0-3 in conference play.
On Saturday, the Falcons won against the Kent State Golden Flashes three sets to one. In a tight contest, the Falcons won 23-25, 27-25, 25-16 and 25-17. An impressive offensive game for the Falcons, Jelena Sunjic had 19 kills, Alyssa Maloney and Madeline Brandewie had 12 each, and Isabel Kovacic had eight. Madeline Garda had an impressive matchup for the Falcons, as she posted 29 digs. She improved a national leading average to 6.38 digs/set.
It was clear that Coach Danijela Tomic was glad to finally get her first conference win of the season, stating, “I think the monkey is finally off our backs, I think this was more mental for our team, and we needed to win that second set … I told them at the end of the match that I’m very proud of them to bounce back this way. I told them before the match, let’s see what we are made of. This is what good teams do. We are going to hit adversity, but let’s learn from that adversity and be better, and that’s what we did tonight. So, I am very proud of them.”
With the Falcons finally getting their first conference win of the season, the Falcons will look to continue the momentum they currently have to finish the schedule. As Bowling Green looks to make a run in the conference tournament, they will need to make improvements based on the early MAC games played already.
Coming up for the Falcons are four straight road games. With a match against Akron on Oct. 7, they will travel to Buffalo the following day to play the Bulls on Oct. 8. After that, the Falcons will travel to Michigan to face Eastern on Oct. 14 and Central on Oct. 15.
