ROCK HILL, SC – One of the biggest weeks for the UVA Wise volleyball team in years still keeps going as the South Atlantic Conference has recognized the achievements of the Highland Cavaliers with the program's first-ever sweep of conference Player of the Week awards, with
Olivia Amos earning WePlayed Sports SAC Offensive Player of the Week honors and
Abigail Curtis getting the nod as the Defensive Player of the Week.
UVA Wise had a big week in volleyball, going 3-0 in South Atlantic Conference matches on the road, winning at local rival Emory& Henry 3-0, defeating Wingate for the first time ever – and on their own court - by a 3-2 margin, and capping it off by besting Coker 3-1. They also set a new record for SAC wins in a season as they now have eleven, which also ties them for the fifth most in program history with the 2002 squad.
Amos, a freshman setter from Walnut Cove, North Carolina, had double-doubles in two of three matches for the week. At Emory & Henry on Tuesday she had 40 assists and nine digs. In the Highland Cavaliers' five-set win Friday evening at Wingate, she had a career-high 65 assists (the third most in the program's NCAA Era and ties for sixth-most in a match in program history) to go along with 13 digs. At Coker the next day she had 51 assists and a career-high 18 digs. The 65 assists at Wingate are the most in the SAC this season.
She has had three matches with 50+ assists this season and ranks third in the SAC and 30th in the nation in assists per set. She also is 53rd nationally in total assists.
Curtis, a senior libero from Schoolcraft, Michigan, made her mark on the program's record books this week. In Tuesday's win at Emory and Henry she had her 100th service ace, becoming the eighth player in program history to reach that mark. After the team defeated Wingate for the first time ever on Friday, she helped lead them to a win at Coker Saturday afternoon with a career-high 40 digs, moving her to second on the program's career digs list. She now has 1,787 for her career.
Curtis leads the SAC in both total digs and digs per set and nationally is fifth in digs per set and 18th in total digs. Her 40 digs at Coker on Saturday are the most in the SAC in a match this season.
This is the first time Amos has earned Player of the Week Honors, and the second time this season Curtis has earned Defensive POTW honors. Curtis is also the first Highland Cavalier to be named a conference player of the week twice in their career since Karley Allen earned Mountain East Conference Offensive honors in 2014 and 2015. The last UVA Wise volleyball student-athlete to earn player of the week honors twice in the same season was Britney Lawson in 2008.
The last time the team won three conference road matches in a row was in October of 2005, and they did it in an interesting way. They gutted out a 3-2 win at Bryan on Friday, Oct. 7, with Kate Daub leading the way with 24 kills, Davina Dishner had 46 assists, and Cara Hamilton 29 digs in a match that started at 7 p.m. The team then made the 50 mile trip from Dayton, Tennessee, to Lookout Mountain, Georgia, to face Covenant the next morning at 10:30 am. Daub had 19 kills, Dishner 19 assists and Hamilton 10 digs in the Cavs' 3-0 win over the Scots. The team then quickly boarded the vans and made the 65 mile trip to Athens, Tennessee, for a 4 p.m. meeting with Tennessee Wesleyan. Daub once again had 19 kills, while Dishner had a double-double with 25 assists and 15 digs as UVA Wise beat the Bulldogs 3-1. So they won three matches in less than 24 hours with a combined 12 sets at three different locations 50+ miles away from each other.
The current iteration of the Highland Cavaliers will be seeking to add to their win total as well as move up in the conference standings as they play their final two road matches of the year this coming weekend when they play at Mars Hill Friday at 6 p.m., followed by a 2 p.m. tilt at Tusculum on Saturday. They will then return home for the final weekend of the regular season when they welcome Newberry (and a new scoreboard for the Prior Center) Friday, Nov. 6 for a 6 p.m. Senior Day matchup, followed by the regular season finale the next morning at 11 a.m. against Anderson.
