Piper becomes third Otterbein volleyball All-American selection

Otter­bein Uni­ver­sity vol­ley­ball stand­out Tabatha Piper (Sunbury/Big Wal­nut) earned a spot on the Amer­i­can Vol­ley­ball Coaches Asso­ci­a­tion (AVCA) All-American team, the orga­ni­za­tion announced Tues­day afternoon.

Piper, a 5-foot, 11-inch set­ter, was voted to the Third Team.

For Piper, the honor gives the for­mer Golden Eagle another pres­ti­gious award after earn­ing First Team All-Ohio Ath­letic Con­fer­ence (OAC) and All-Great Lakes Region this sea­son while becom­ing just the third All-American in Otter­bein vol­ley­ball history.

Piper handed out over 1,000 assists for a second-straight sea­son, amass­ing 30-plus assists in 22 dif­fer­ent matches and sur­pass­ing 40 in eight out­ings. She now has 2,205 for her two-year stint as a Car­di­nal, putting her 1,024 helpers shy of the school’s all-time record with two years of eli­gi­bil­ity remaining.

Her final num­bers equaled 9.3 assists per set, includ­ing an impres­sive eight per frame against regionally-ranked oppo­nents. Piper’s .341 hit­ting per­cent­age led the team, but did not meet the require­ment of four attacks per set for OAC or NCAA min­i­mum stan­dards. She also tal­lied 169 digs, 32 blocks, and 28 ser­vice aces this fall.

“Tab was a crit­i­cal leader for us this sea­son, and it wasn’t just because she plays the posi­tion she does,” Otter­bein head coach Mon­ica McDon­ald explained. “She’s always very calm and com­posed, and that keeps our team focused. We were able to give her a lot of con­trol, let­ting her feel out the defense and then run the offense as she saw fit. She does an amaz­ing job adjust­ing within the match.”

Otter­bein played to a history-making sea­son as a team, win­ning the program’s first-ever OAC cham­pi­onship and crack­ing the Top-25 national poll for a first time. The group, ranked No. 10 in the coun­try at season’s end, fell to sixth-ranked Hope Col­lege (Mich.) in the first round of the NCAA Tour­na­ment to fin­ish 26–8 overall.

Posted by Gary Henery on Nov 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.