Weininger reaches milestone as No. 11 ONU advances in OAC Tourney

By Steven Wright

ADA – Junior setter Katie Weininger eclipsed the 3,000-assist mark with 36 on the evening, leading No. 11 Ohio Northern volleyball in a three-game sweep of Marietta 30-14, 30-12, 30-21 in the quarterfinals of the Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament Tuesday evening.

The OAC Tournament top-seeded Polar Bears improve to 25-6 on the season while the Pioneers end their season with a 12-15 record.

Weininger’s milestone keeps here in fifth place on ONU’s all-time assist leaderboard with 3,013.

Liz Schnelle led the Polar Bears with 16 kills and three blocks while Melissa Goodman chipped in 10 kills and a block.

Schnelle is also nearing the record books as she is 13 kills away from breaking her personal-high for a season (498), 16 kills away from 1,000 for her career and 44 kills away from owning the single-season record (529).

Solid Polar Bear defense held the Pioneers to just 23 kills while committing 27 hitting errors and recording a -.033 hitting percentage.

Liz Decima, Mandi Fought and Laura Vuyk all recorded 13 digs in the match while fellow back row player Renee Berry joined them in double-digits with 10.

Fought and Vuyk also both added two service aces as part of the ONU attack.

Abby Schaller led the Polar Bears with four total blocks on the night and added five kills in the front row.

Northern scored the first seven points of Game 1 to set the tone early and used two other runs of at least five consecutive points to easily capture the victory.

Game 2 was much of the same as ONU jumped out to an early 7-2 lead and eventually built the lead to 22-6 before finishing the game.

Marietta played better in Game 3 but proved unable to come back from an early 7-1 deficit.

“I was especially pleased with the way we played during the first two games of tonight’s match,” said head coach Kate Witte. “We played with a great deal of emotion, and continuing that will be extremely important to our success the rest of the season.”

Ohio Northern will host the semifinals on Friday at 5 pm and 7 pm and the finals on Saturday at 2 pm.

The Polar Bears will face fifth-seed Capital at 7 pm Friday which defeated fourth-seed Baldwin-Wallace in a five-game match this evening.

Two-seed Mount Union will play three-seed Heidelberg in the other semifinal match at 5 pm.