The College of New Rochelle Women's Volleyball Earns NCAA DIII Statistical Championship

The NCAA has released the final statistics for the 2014 Division III Volleyball season, and The College of New Rochelle has been named the statistical champion for Aces per Set for a Team.

Among the national leaders all season, the Blue Angels were superbly effective on their service game, averaging 3.71 aces per set. They easily outdistanced the second ranked team, John Jay College, which averaged 3.38 aces per set. Only 10 DIII teams averaged 3.0 aces per set or better, which makes CNR’s convincing gap over the rest of the nation even more impressive.

As this is a team category, it stands to reason that several Blue Angels were ranked nationally on the individual aces per set list, with four players ranked in the top-75. Sophomore libero Tiany Perez Diaz led the way, averaging 0.81 aces per set, which ranked her eighth overall. She was closely followed by rookie setter Melanie Lopez Soto, who ranked 11th at 0.78 aces per set. Fellow freshman Fabiola Padilla Rios ranked 25th from her outside hitter position, guiding home 0.70 aces per set. Sophomore setter Indigo Flowers, who ranked second in DIII in aces per set last season, ranked 71st at 0.58 aces per set.

The statistical title is the culmination of a steady journey towards the top ranking for Head Coach Georgia Efthalitsides’ team, as the Blue Angels have been ranked in the top-10 in aces per set for a team in each of her six seasons at the helm. In her first season, 2009, CNR was ranked seventh when the final season statistics were released. The team moved up to sixth in 2010, another spot to fifth in 2011 before making the jump to second in the nation in 2012. After falling one spot to third in 2013, the Blue Angels reached the statistical pinnacle this season.

This marks the first time in program history that the Blue Angels volleyball team has earned a statistical championship. The last time any CNR program earned this honor was 1999, when the softball team earned a trio of statistical championships.

Efthalitsides has continually raised the bar for the Blue Angels program during her six seasons at the helm, earning AD3I Coach of the Year honors after leading CNR to the HVIAC regular season and tournament championship titles. She guided the Blue Angels to a perfect 5-0 record in conference play, with all five wins coming in straight sets, and broke the program record set last year for wins in a season, compiling a 25-8 overall record, with 20 of the 25 wins coming in straight sets. She also mentored the team to program records for consecutive wins (11) and home wins, as the Blue Angels posted an unblemished 15-0 record at the Wellness Center. In her six seasons, CNR has won two regular season championships, four tournament championships and have advanced to the conference semifinals every season. This year, the program’s first in the ECAC, she led the team to the first postseason appearance in program history and the first for any Blue Angel program since 1984-85 (basketball).

Learn more about the Blue Angels at CNRAthletics.com.