TOLEDO, Ohio — The Toledo women’s volleyball team finished the job on Saturday, Oct. 24, beating Ohio 3-1 at Savage Arena to complete a two-match weekend sweep of the Bobcats and keep the Rockets near the top of the Mid-American Conference race.
The win came a night after Toledo opened the series with a 3-0 sweep of Ohio on Friday, 25-19, 25-17, 25-22. Saturday’s four-set result made it two wins in roughly 24 hours over the same opponent — the kind of weekend that separates contenders in a compressed conference schedule.
Friday’s opener set the tone. Sophie Catalano and Sierra Pertzborn led the Rockets with 10 kills each, Pertzborn hitting .444, while Lilly Merk added eight kills on a .438 clip and a team-best five blocks. Libero Grace Freiberger recorded 11 digs, her 19th straight match in double figures, and setter Janelle Green handed out a team-high 20 assists.
Toledo’s defense did as much of the work as its attack. The Rockets held Ohio to a .058 hitting percentage on Friday night, the sixth time this season Toledo has held an opponent at .100 or below — a defensive identity that has carried the program through the first half of the MAC slate.
Friday also carried weight beyond the score. The match marked the first Jean Ann Harrison Volleyball Alumni and Women’s Health and Cancer Awareness Day, honoring the late program alumna, and head coach Brian Wright said the night was filled with purpose and extra emotion, with a moment of silence for Harrison before the first serve.
The weekend sweep improves Toledo to 16-4 overall and 8-2 in MAC play, following a split at Western Michigan the previous weekend. With the conference tournament set for Nov. 20-22 in Muncie, Indiana, every home weekend the Rockets can bank now improves their seeding position for November.
Ohio, meanwhile, leaves Toledo still searching for traction after back-to-back losses to Ball State the weekend before and two more defeats at Savage Arena. The Bobcats traded runs with Toledo throughout Friday’s third set, closing to 23-22 before a Bobcat error and a Catalano kill ended the match — close enough to show the gap is narrow, but the Rockets closed both nights.
Toledo heads back on the road next, traveling to Miami for a pair of conference matches on Oct. 30 and 31 before the Battle of I-75 at Bowling Green on Nov. 3.