Wake Forest Athletics
Volleyball Ready For ACC Tournament
11/21/2002 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
Nov. 21, 2002
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The Wake Forest volleyball team (13-17, 6-10 ACC - 7th) travels to Atlanta this weekend for the ACC Championship at O'Keefe Gymnasium. Finishing seventh in the league with 6-10 conference record, the Demon Deacons enter the tournament as the seven seed, where they will meet the two seed and host of the tournament, No. 20 Georgia Tech (28-5, 13-3 - 2nd) Friday night at 5:00 p.m.
Wake Forest is 6-13 all-time against Georgia Tech and is 0-2 versus the Yellow Jackets this year, falling 3-1 at home on Oct. 19 and getting shutout 3-0 in Atlanta on Nov. 15.
The Demon Deacons are 3-15 in the ACC Championship and have only advanced past the quarterfinals once - when Wake beat Georgia Tech in 1999 to advance to the semifinals.
Wake Forest dropped a pair of conference matches on the road last weekend to close out the ACC regular season. The Demon Deacons were shutout, 3-0 by then-ranked No. 23 Georgia Tech in Atlanta on Friday and then suffered a heartbreaking 3-2 loss at Clemson on Saturday, after taking an early 2-0 lead in the match.
Outside hitter Valerie Rydberg led the team last week putting away 36 kills and coming up with 29 digs in eight games. The redshirt freshman had a huge game at Clemson on Saturday with a team-leading and career best 29 kills, hitting .339 with 18 digs, two service aces and three blocks. Rydberg leads the team with 323 kills, 320 digs and 47 aces. She is ranked fourth in the ACC with .42 aces per game and 10th in the league with 2.88 digs per game.
Sara Beth DeLisle led the team with 11 kills at Georgia Tech on Friday and followed that up by tallying a team best 22 digs to go with a career best seven blocks the next night at Clemson. The junior outside hitter has really turned it on in the last few weeks, hitting .174 in the last 15 matches with .253 kills per game and 2.65 digs per game, after hitting .125 in the first 15 matches with 1.93 kills per game and 1.89 digs per game. DeLisle is now third on the team with 2.27 digs per game and fourth with 2.23 kills per game.
Sophomore Kim Stern turned in a stellar performance on Saturday at Clemson. The starting middle blocker broke the school single match record with 13 block assists to go with a career best 21 kills, hitting .326 for the five game affair. Stern leads the team with three kills per game and .96 blocks per game. She is seven solo blocks, 13 block assists and 15 total blocks shy of cracking the top five in each of those categories in the single-season school records.
