Sept. 22, 2001
The University of Notre Dame volleyball team (5-3) won its first BIG EAST Conference match of the season in three games (30-22, 30-15, 30-16) over Syracuse (5-4) at the Joyce Center on Friday evening. The Irish have now won 34 consecutive regular-season conference matches.
Kristy Kreher (Birmingham, Mich.) had her first double-double of the season versus the Orangewomen, posting 14 kills and 11 digs on .458 hitting. Sophomore setter Kristen Kinder (Fresno, Calif.) helped the Irish offense hit .313 in the match with 36 assists and adding 11 digs on defense.
The teams fought back and forth in the first half of the initial game of the match, but Notre Dame jumped ahead after the score was tied 9-9. Kim Fletcher (St. Louis, Mo.) scored a kill, followed by an Emily Loomis (Ft. Wayne, Ind.) kill and a Malinda Goralski (Missouri City, Texas) solo block to give the Irish a three-point cushion. Syracuse was unable to recover for the rest of the game and Goralski and Kreher combined for four kills to put their team up 1-0 in the match.
Notre Dame would control the action during the rest of the match without much of an Orangewomen threat. The Irish built leads of 23-12 in game two and 25-10 in game three, allowing every Notre Dame player to see action in the match.
Notre Dame will be back in action Friday, Sept. 28 (7 p.m.), against Virgina Tech in the Joyce Center. The Hokies and the Irish will be meeting for the first time as BIG EAST opponents.