Northern Kentucky volleyball has had players record 30 kills in a match, most recently Kelsey Wesaw, who had 30 against Northern Michigan in 2008,just before the team joined Division I. Northern Kentucky has had plenty of players record 30 digs in a match as well. But until Saturday at the Holiday Inn Express Invitational, they’d never had one player hit both thresholds in the same match.
Senior outside hitter Haley Libs, in the team’s 3-2 win over hosts Northern Illinois in the evening match, had 30 kills and 34 digs, making the first 30/30 match in Northern Kentucky history. Her 30 kills also breaks the school’s Division I record of 26 kills, set by her last season against Wright State. She also hit a team-high .290 and took 69 total swings (out of a whopping 215 for the team in the marathon match).
Libs is now 50 digs away from becoming the school’s 10th member of the 1000 kill/1000 dig club. She’s averaging 4.3 digs-per-set this season, which puts her on pace to hit t he mark sometime in the next 12 sets, unless she has another outburst like she did this weekend. Libs led the team in both kills (366) and digs (361) in 2017.
As a team, Northern Kentucky went 1-2 on the weekend, losing a 5-setter to Virginia and via sweep to Nevada before topping Northern Illinois 3-2 in the finale. The team is 3-3 on the season. Next week, they’ll head to nearby Evansville, Indiana for the Evansville Invitational. There, they’ll face Austin Peay and the Universit of Evansville.
We were unable to locate a comprehensive list of 30/30 matches, though we foundd a few one-off cases. UIC’s Jackie Utz accomplished it with 32 kills and 30 digs vs. DePaul in 1999.
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