Men's Volleyball win bragging rights

April 7, 2005
By Tait Hillmer
Staff Writer

The St. Ambrose University Men’s volleyball team warms up listening to hand selected music to pump them up. The Bees did not need anything to get them up for their latest match-up against the Augustana College Vikings.

On March 23, the men’s volleyball team played its last home game against their cross river rival. But wait, there is more. First year coach Matt Jennings graduated from Augustana College in 2003. There is still more. Augustana won the first meeting between the two schools in three straight sets on Feb. 16. Even though the music was blaring the team was raring to go.

Despite shaky play in several of their previous games, the Bees needed no extra motivation to take some of their aggression out on the Vikings. After falling to Augie in their first meeting of the year the SAU volleyers felt they had something to prove.

The Fighting Bees exacted some revenge on the Vikings, beating them in three straight sets, 33-31, 30-28 and 30-24.

Senior outside hitter Bill Gleeson and Freshman Joe Bara led the way delivering kill after kill and the occasional service ace to give St. Ambrose the advantage. With a deep bench the Fighting Bees have been able to utilize a very talented freshman class led by Bara.

Gleeson is one of two seniors on the team, and the only one who has used up his eligibility after this season. For Gleeson the final run has been a rocky one, but the win at home against the Vikings made it a wonderful finish.

Even though St. Ambrose v. Augustana is a rivalry, Coach Jennings and the Vikings bench playfully bantered back and forth throughout the contest. During one game stoppage, to find out the true score, Jennings jokingly said, “I do know how to count, after all I did graduate from Auggie.”

The Bees weren’t about to play the fool on April 1. SAU defeated the Moody Bible Institute in a Chicagoland Collegiate Volleyball Association game. The road warrior Bees then traveled on Sunday to Milwaukee to take on regular season conference leader Cardinal Stritch.

St. Ambrose lost to Cardinal Stritch for the second time this season, giving the Wolves the CCVA regular season conference championship.

The Bees still have a chance to take home some hardware by winning the CCVA Tournament Championship with playoff games on April 6 and 9. These contests will mark the end of the sixth season of men’s volleyball at St. Ambrose.

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