After two 3-0 victories on the weekend of Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, Washburn volleyball holds a close second place in the MIAA conference with a 4-1 record on the conference and a 13-4 record overall.

Both of the teams that Washburn took down over the weekend have yet to win a match in the MIAA, Southern Baptist and Missouri Southern, respectively, losing to Washburn 3-0 put them in the bottom of the standings, and put Washburn directly below currently undefeated Nebraska-Kearney, a team that has yet to lose a game this season and was the cause of Washburn’s singular defeat Sept. 23.

Beating a lower seeded team doesn’t demote the Ichabod’s effort. A college match is still a match, and as we’ve seen before with the Ichabods, every team is just another team that they have to try to win against.

“It feels good, any time we come out and beat a team on our own court it feels really nice,” said senior Leanna Willer, the team’s usual MVP as well as this week’s Hy-Vee/Washburn Student Athlete of the Week. “It doesn’t really matter who gets the kills as long as we get the job done. It’s kinda my job; I’m supposed to pass and get kills and play defense. So when I’m on and doing well it’s a great feeling.”

Willer led the team with 27 kills over the course of the two games, closely followed by senior Sarah Vicory at 15 kills and Makayla Maxwell at 14, with 86 of the teams 109 total points being kills. But kills don’t always win the match. The team has 12 more MIAA matches before the MIAA Volleyball Championship in November. While they have plenty of 3-0 victories under their belt, the team has a lot of season left in front of them.

“We had somewhat of a rough start,” said Willer. “We’ve been working with a bunch of different line ups but I think now we’ve kinda got our rotations down, so I’m feeling good [about the season].”

The team still has some areas for improvement however, as pointed out by Sarah Vicory.

“There’s definitely things we can work on, we need to work on our missed serves,” said Vicory. “We need to keep focusing on our side of the net and keep winning games.”

The Ichabods return to their home court Oct. 7 for a match against Nebraska-Kearney, the current top of the standings team. The Ichabods lost to them 0-3 Sept. 23. They have a match Oct. 8 at home against Fort Hays State, who they defeated 3-1 Sept. 24. The Ichabods will have a non-conference match against Maryville University Oct. 11.