Rio routs Alice Lloyd in straight sets

Rio Grande Sports Information
     PIPPA PASSES, Ky. - Once the University of Rio Grande got rolling, it was a storm - a RedStorm, to be precise - which couldn't be stopped.
     Head coach Billina Donaldson's squad scored 18 of the final 22 points in the opening set and eight of the first 10 winners in set two and never looked back, cruising to a 25-9, 25-11, 25-16 win over Alice Lloyd College, Saturday afternoon, in River States Conference women's volleyball action at the Perry Campus Center.
     Rio Grande ran its record to 21-7 overall and 9-1 in league play with the victory.
     The host Eagles dropped to 6-20 overall and 0-10 in the RSC.
     Twelve points into the match, Alice Lloyd trailed just 7-5 following a kill by Christina Amburgey, but any hopes the home team had on entertaining an upset quickly faded.
     Rio Grande went on a 26-6 spurt which encompassed the remainder of the opening set and the start of the second stanza, including a 11-1 stretch to finish off set one and the 8-2 start to set two.
     In fact, the only time that the RedStorm trailed in the entire match was at 2-1 in the opening period.
     Set three was much of the same.
     An Amburgey kill had ALC as close as 9-7, but Rio proceeded to score seven straight points - five off of Eagle errors - to open up a 16-7 advantage and went on to close things out.
     Rio Grande finished with a dazzling .361 attack percentage as a team (39 kills, 13 errors, 72 attacks). It was the RedStorm's second-highest swing percentage of the year and marked the third time in the last four outings with a team attack percentage of .330 or better.
     Senior Amanda Rarick (Canal Winchester, OH) finished with 11 kills to lead Rio's balanced attack, while junior Elle McLoughlin (Zanesville, OH) had 29 assists and junior Kayla Sedgwick (Richwood, OH) tallied 10 digs.
     Sophomore McKenna Diederich (Pickerington, OH) had a trio of solo blocks in the winning effort.
     Alice Lloyd finished with seven more attack errors (21) than it had kills (14) over 77 attacks and finished with a -.091 swing percentage.
     Kyleah Ward led the Eagles with five kills, while Camryn Thompson had six assists and the duo of T.K. Ellis and Jadyn Hall had five digs each.
     Amburgey totaled a pair of solo blocks in the loss.
     Rio Grande will return to action next Friday when it travels to Indiana University Kokomo in a battle of the league's top two teams.
     The Cougars are unbeaten in RSC play and hold a one-game lead over the RedStorm in the conference standings.
     First serve at 7 p.m.