11 September 2018
Brian Blevins
The weekend of Aug. 24 was described by Chrissy Elder as a less-than-stellar weekend for the UCCS volleyball team.
Elder, head coach of the Lady Mountain Lions, admitted that, while good things were seen that weekend, during the Washburn Invitational tournament hosted by Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, the team still has room for improvement, though there is much promise.
Alyssa Brinton, however, has a different story to tell.
At the end of the 2-day event, the 6-foot senior — the only senior on the team — was honored with a spot on the Washburn University All-Tournament Team, along with 11 other athletes from a variety of universities.
Brinton finished the tournament with two double-doubles, ratcheting up 11 kills and 12 digs in the Mountain Lions’ second and third matches. A double-double is having double-digit number of both kills and digs in one match, where a kill is a point scoring play and a dig is a defensive play that allows play to continue. In the fourth and final match of the tournament, she put up a season best of 13 kills.
Across all four matches, Brinton’s hitting was .250 or better, and she averaged 3.25 digs per set in the final three matches.
These performance earned Brinton her All-Tournament spot. Other honorees include Sarah Vang of CSU Pueblo, Courtney Bolf of Henderson State University, and Most-Valuable-Player Maddy Brunder of Northwest Missouri State.
In the tournament, Western Missouri took the win, led by head coach Amy Woerth, finishing the weekend with a 4-0 record.