Sept. 26, 2003

Box Score

Fort Worth, Texas - With a lot of motivation from the hugely supportive home crowd tonight, the Horned Frogs played some of the best volleyball they have played all year against visiting Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, pulling out all the stops on their way to shattering the school team hitting average they had only set this afternoon.

The Frogs were on fire on both ends of the court, sweeping the floor clean of nearly all Islander attempts and hammering home resounding kills into their opponent's side. Ellen Rehme led the way, collecting 16 kills with one error in 21 attempts, finishing the night with a .714 average and picking up nine digs. Dominika Szabo had another excellent match, killing 13 balls with one error for a .632 average. Szabo closed the day with 30 kills and two errors in 38 attempts, coming up with a .737 average. These marks set the two women in the top five attack percentages in school history, surpassed only by Anna Vaughn's .688 performance against Pittsburgh last weekend, Allison Lynch's .813 average against Villanova in 1999, and Szabo's own .842 performance this afternoon against Grambling State.

Collectively, TCU hit better than ever before, attacking with .612 percent accuracy, slamming home 58 kills to the Islanders' 15. The average ranks second-highest in Conference USA history. The Frogs picked up more than twice as many digs than Corpus Christi, coming away with 40 to their 19. TCU also tied their service ace record previously set against Texas A&M-Prairie View set earlier this month, slipping 17 unanswered serves past the Islander defenders.

Freshman Jenna Miller also had a great match, hitting .353 with 10 kills and four errors in 17 attempts. Freshman libero Britany Smith cleaned up nine digs. Head coach Prentice Lewis took the microphone after the game to personally thank the fans who attended the 7:30 p.m. match. Assistant coach Barbara Kovacs commented that "the team fed off the crowd." Lewis concurred, adding that "we played our best tonight. We played like a home team."

The Frogs pulled off incredible crowd-pleasing plays throughout the match. Rehme's unstoppable spike flattened several Islanders; Tori Barlow's sly dumps stumped the defenders; Katie Lacker's rolling dig fell as a kill on the other side of the court.

With the win, the Frogs improve their record to 12-3 overall, 2-0 in the TCU Molten Invitational. They play again tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. Earlier in the night, Saint Mary's (10-4 overall, 2-0 in the tournament) took Grambling (7-15 overall, 0-2 in the tournament) in three games. Also on the schedule for tomorrow: Saint Francis takes on Grambling first thing in the morning at 9:30 a.m.; Saint Mary's dukes it out with TAMU-Corpus Christi at 12 p.m.; TAMU-Corpus Christi and Grambling have a go at it at 5 p.m.

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