DECATUR, ILL. – The Carthage College women's volleyball team knocked off the defending College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin champions, the Millikin University Big Blue, in their 2018 league opener on Tuesday night in Decatur, 3-0.
 
The win improves the Lady Reds to 8-6 overall and to 1-0 in the conference, while Millikin falls to 6-6 and 1-1 in the CCIW.
 
"Millikin is a tough place to play!  It feels good to get a conference win to open the CCIW season," said head coach Leanne Ulmer after the win.   "We served very well tonight and had some timely blocks to push us through since we didn't hit for a very good percentage tonight.  Proud of the team and we will get back to work to try to get better every day."
 
Carthage took the three-setter despite opening with a -.027 attack in the first set, as the Lady Reds took the opener with just eight kills, while committing nine errors.  But Millikin committed ten attack errors and three service errors in the set to give Carthage the 25-21 win.  Carthage never registered ten kills in a set, but the Lady Reds limited themselves to just six errors over the final two sets, while Millikin committed 15 attack errors to propel the Carthage to a 25-19 second set win and 25-22 third set win. 
 
Carthage dominated from the service line in the win, registering their third ten-plus ace match of the season and just two service errors, while Millikin had just two aces and ten errors from the line.  Ellie LeCount led Carthage with four aces, followed by Laura De Rosales and Megan Dawrant with two, and Megan Behrendt and Shannon Kebisek with one each.
 
Behrendt led the Lady Reds offense, as the junior tied for the match-high with ten kills and added a pair of blocks and seven digs in the win.  Linda Morton and Shannon Kebisek finished behind Behrendt with seven and six kills respectively, and LeCount had 21 of the Lady Reds' 22 assists in the win.
 
Defensively, the Lady Reds were led by Katie Laio and Laura De Rosales, as Laio had three blocks and De Rosales picked up 15 digs.  Abigail McGowan was second on the team with twelve digs.
 
Next up for the Lady Reds, Carthage will head back into weekend tournament action with matches against Aurora University, Ripon College and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at the 2018 Aurora University Tournament.  Carthage will open with Aurora on Friday night at 7:30 p.m.