Nov. 16, 2001

Final Stats

Boca Raton - Florida Atlantic University (12-15) opened the 2001 Atlantic Sun Volleyball Championship with a 30-26, 30-21, 27-30, 30-22 victory over Jacksonville University (8-17).

"It was a good match," said Jody Brown, FAU's head coach. "We had scouted them and knew what they could do. The key for us was to serve aggressive to keep Carie Bosworth off the net. We held her to 18 attempts, where she is ussually up in the 25 range. That was one of our main goals to keep her away from the net."

The Lady Owls, who entered the tournament as the no. 4 seed, took game one behind the efforts of senior outside hitter Ashley Bodily, who earned seven kills. Switching up the attack, middle hitters Gracie Heim and Jessica Kahn led the squad over the next two games with a combine kill effort of eight kills each.

Jacksonville threatened in the third game evening the score at 16 times before taking control and the game at 27.

In the fourth and deciding game, FAU led by as many as seven points, much of the game, before closing out the match.

Both Ashley Bodily and Gracie Heim tallied 18 kills, while Jessica Kahn rounded out the double-digit kill leaders with 17. The team's offense was led by Jeana Boyle, who had 51 assists. Defensively, Bodily had 16 digs, Marja Valkeauori had 14, while Lindsay Overton and Boyle added 11.

"We knew exactly what we needed to do," Ashley Bodily said. "It was just a matter of us being desciplined and keeping to our game plan and wanting to win."

The Dolphins were led by Brooke Ahrens and Radka Dimitrova who had 15 and 14 kills, respectively. Carie Bosworth had 50 assists and led the squad with 18 digs.

FAU will next play Georgia State University, the championships' no. 1 seed, 4 pm, Friday.