Kaylin Plautz had a huge game for the Yellowjackets in Saturday’s win over North Central. Plautz finished with a match-high 18 kills.
Photo by Holden Law

The Yellowjacket volley­ball team made its final regular season appear­ance on its home court on Saturday, March 27. The ‘Jackets made quick work of North Central, downing the Rams 3-0 in a match that took just under an hour at Mertz Mortorelli Gym.

Prior to the match, the Yellowjackets honored a pair of seniors seeing their last action at The Mertz – Megan Taylor , who has missed the bulk of the season with an in­jury, and Elise Ertl. While Taylor was out of the lineup, Ertl finished her final regular season home match with a kill, two assists and five digs while playing strong defense in the back row.

The ‘Jackets cruised through the first two sets, winning 15 straight points in the first set and 13 of the first 14 in set two to build two insurmountable leads. Things were closer in the third set, however, as the teams went back-and-forth for the bulk of the frame.

With the score tied 11-11, the Yellowjackets went on a 5-0 run to pull away. North Central pulled back within three, but the Yel­lowjackets closed things out, getting the final two points on kills by Kay­lin Plautz to take the set 25-20 and the match 3-0. Plautz had a big day for the Yellowjackets, attack­ing at a clip of .615 and finishing with a match-high 18 kills.

Alexie Pryd also had 10 kills. Megan Holz finished with 33 assists and also had eight aces from the service line. She also led the Yellowjackets with nine digs.

The Yellowjackets will close out the regular season on Saturday, April 3 when they travel to New Ulm, Minnesota to take on Martin Luther. Open­ing serve is set for 1:00 p.m.

The Yellowjackets cur­rently sit at 7-2 overall and are 5-2 in conference play. Martin Luther is 3-5 with a 1-5 conference play record. This will be the first meeting between the two teams in this abbrevi­ated season.

Following the comple­tion of the game, the ‘Jackets will prepare for the UMAC conference tournament. Due to COVID-19, this will be the highest championship that the team is eligible to compete for this season. The tournament will run from Monday, April 5 un­til Saturday, April 10 with the highest seed hosting each game. The ‘Jackets will likely play on Thurs­day, April 8.