After recording her 2000th assist, Elena Karakasi is now among the 10 best setters of all times of the big Syracuse University! Mpakodimou is ranked 1st in NCAA for total service aces! Another double-double for Olga Zampati, this time with 12 kills and 12 digs in the win against Saint Peter’s! Darina Kumanova had another double-double with 12 kills and 13 digs in the big upset against #23 Pepperdine!
No. 16 Creighton was unable to weather the Red Storm! Alexakou and Kathariou’s team defeated the Bluejays in 4 sets. Amazing 0.923 hitting percentage for Tontai that led her Miami Hurricanes to the win with 12 kills! Outstanding performances from young Melina from Chalkida, having a new career high of 12 kills!
Amazing consistency and top-notch performance from many international players this week in NCAA D1 action! Beste Ayhan added another 15 kills and 14 blocks this weekend, rising to the 3rd spot overall for blocks in NCAA D1!
Three players broke their personal records last week, raising the bar even higher. Firstly, Sevgi Koyuncu with a new season-high of 7 assists, Hande Yetis with a new season-high of 9 digs and Mila Ilieva with a new season-high of 13 kills! Not one but two double-doubles for Sabire Karacaova. The young student-athlete recorded 11 kills and 11 digs in the win against UC Riverside and 12 kills and 18 digs in the win against UC Davis!
Bakodimou is not an expert in stamp collecting but … ace collecting! The Greek outside hitter entered the CAA conference adding 6 more (!) against UNC Wilmington and now is in the Top-8 of NCAA! Kathariou literally blocked Seton Hall, and now with a new record of kills and 5 more blocks she is in the Top-10 of America as a blocker! Last week, Iro Chounta broke her personal record not once, but twice! Firstly against Purdue Fort Wayne with 17 digs and then in the big win against IUPUI, Iro Chounta broke her record AGAIN with 19 digs! Another double-double for Elena Karakasi, Katerina Papazoglou and Marianna Anastasiadi with 42 assists-10 digs, 10 kills-10 digs and 16 assists-11 digs respectively! Chrysanthi Stamatiou recorded her first double-double of the season with 14 kills and 11 digs! Such a great start for Elena Giourda’s Coast Georgia having 15 wins in 16 matches and still remaining undefeated in home games!
Beste Ayhan is rapidly rising among the best blockers in the entire NCAA D1! She sits at # 8 currently, leads the America East Conference in total blocks (66) and she is still in the top-3 players in hitting percentage (0.299)! With a new career high of 11 blocks, Damla Tokman was selected as the CAA-Defensive player of the week! Cagla Bengi surpassed the 300-assist milestone for her career in the match against St.John’s. Sevgi Koyuncu broke last week’s season high with a new one of 31 digs in the big win against King! On September 25th, Sabire Karacaova recorded her first collegiate double-double of 15 kills and 15 digs and Doga Topcicek had another double-double with 14 kills and 15 digs!
1. How would you describe your experience in America while you had to combine high level education and sports? I wouldn't change my experience in America for anything. It was the best choice I have ever made. In my eyes, the universities of America and in general the whole education system make it so much easier for the students to focus on school and homework. If I hadn’t gone abroad I for sure would have been just another college student in her sixth year, whereas by going to America I managed to graduate in four years with a degree in biology in one of the top fifty universities for sciences and engineering. The combination of studies and sports, something that I thought would be easy in my mind when I first got there, is obviously not. You spend a lot of your hours of the day in the gym, at practices, at the weight room, at rehab which are all very important in order to be able to play thirty or forty games within three and a half months. It doesn’t sound easy. Something that I liked is that in college teams really pay attention to grades. If you are not a good student you can’t play. For us it was, obviously, mandatory to have above 3.0 GPA and study hall sessions where the whole team would study together. It was a habit that became our routine and that’s how I learned to manage it but it was for sure not easy.
The preseason matches officially ended and now it is time for conference and hard work. One double-double is not enough for Bakodimou and Karakasi, so they decided to have two! The two Greeks are in a great rhythm and will definitely do great things their senior year. Incredible stat results from Mpampiri and Giourda, always helping their teams positively!
Irem Ucar literally has no limits! Over the last week, the Turkish setter recorded a double-double in every single match! Yilmaz is digging, Yasar is setting and now Odessa has a 6 winning streak! Iowa Western has the perfect 7-0 and can only thank Ozkan for that! The young ds had 57 digs in only 3 matches! Topcicek, Tokman, Karacaova and Ayhan are killing every ball, recording 12, 11, 11 and 10 kills respectively in their last match!
