Despite finishing in third place during the regular season,
Chelsea Fowles, Emily Kortsen and the Utah State women’s volleyball
team won three straight matches to claim the Western Athletic
Conference Tournament championship last weekend, and will square
off against Cal on Friday night in Berkeley to open the NCAA
Division I Women’s Volleyball Championships.
HOLLISTER
Despite finishing in third place during the regular season, Chelsea Fowles, Emily Kortsen and the Utah State women’s volleyball team won three straight matches to claim the Western Athletic Conference Tournament championship last weekend, and will square off against Cal on Friday night in Berkeley to open the NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championships.
It is just the fourth time in school history the Aggies have qualified to the NCAA tournament, and the first time since the 2005 season. The Logan, Utah school is 2-3 all-time in the year-end tourney, according to the school’s website.
Utah State is on a roll coming into the Division I championships, however. The Aggies have won six straight matches, including three in the WAC tournament when they defeated sixth-seeded Nevada (3-1), second-seeded New Mexico (3-2) and top-seeded and third-ranked Hawaii (3-0).
The title win over Hawaii was the biggest shocker of all. The Aggies had not only lost both their matches to the Rainbow Wahine by 3-0 margins during the regular season, but Hawaii had also won the last 10 tournament championships in the WAC.
In fact, Utah State became only the third team in WAC history to earn the tourney title — BYU won the first two, Hawaii the next 10 — while it also ended Hawaii’s 23-match and 62-set winning streaks.
The senior Fowles, a 2007 graduate of San Benito High School and Utah State’s starting setter, compiled 39 assists, 10 digs, four kills and two blocks against Nevada, had 44 assists, 10 digs, four blocks, two service aces and one kill against New Mexico State, had 35 assists, five digs, four blocks and two kills against Hawaii, and as a result was named to the all-WAC tournament team.
Earlier this year, Fowles set the all-time assists record for the Aggies when she logged her 3,943rd assist, shattering the previous mark of 3,942 career assists set by Carrie Steverson from 1988-91.
Fowles currently has 4,503 career assists.
Kortsen, a 2008 graduate of SBHS, had a season-high nine kills and four digs against Utah earlier this year, and a career-high three service aces against Nevada on Nov. 12.
Utah State (24-8, 9-7 WAC) will now focus its attention on seventh-seeded and fourth-ranked Cal (25-3, 15-3), which finished in a tie for first place in the Pac-10.
The two teams will square off at Berkeley’s Haas Pavilion on Friday night at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online at www.CalBears.com.
The winner will advance to Saturday’s second round against either Mississippi (19-10) or North Carolina (24-9).
