JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – The Shippensburg University volleyball team won its first Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) Championship in school history on Saturday night, defeating the Clarion Golden Eagles in four sets by scores of 25-17, 27-29, 25-21 and 25-20.
 
Shippensburg (30-8) ties its single-season school record for victories and earns an automatic-qualifying berth for the NCAA Tournament in two weeks. In its two games this weekend, the Raiders swung .191 as a team and totaled 23 blocks while defeating the Western Division's Top 2 seeds en route to the conference championship.
 
Freshman Morgan DeFloria was named the 2015 PSAC Tournament MVP after totaling 38 kills, eight digs and six blocks over the weekend's two matches while hitting .315 on 89 attempts. In Saturday's championship match, DeFloria led the Raiders with 17 kills, swinging .239, and had block assists.
 
Clarion (21-16) reached Saturday's finals after a five-set win over UPJ the night before in which it had 15 blocks over the Lady Cats. In Saturday's championship match, however, the Raiders out-blocked the Golden Eagles 13-10 and limited Clarion to a .079 hitting percentage.
 
Senior Taylor Gottshall was sensational in the championship match – clubbing 11 kills and hitting .233 to complement a match-high seven block assists. Gottshall finished the weekend with 20 kills, a .263 hitting percentage, and a whopping 13 total blocks.
 
With her seven block assists on Saturday, Gottshall ties the all-time PSAC record for career block assists with 470. She is four total blocks shy of becoming the fourth player in the history of the conference to total 600 blocks in a career.

Junior Maura Nolan continued her excellent direction of the offense, totaling 41 assists and 14 digs while having a hand in six block assists. Nolan finished the weekend with 93 assists – an average of more than 10 per set.
 
Senior Faith Athey had five kills and six block assists, while junior Annie Goerl and sophomore Courtney Malott each delivered seven kills and double-digit digs.
 
Sophomore Maria Peluso and senior Laura Plank continued their exemplary work from the back row, totaling 17 and 15 digs respectively.
 
SU raced out to leads of 8-4 and 16-9 in the first set to take the first frame in convincing fashion. The Raiders had just three attack errors and hit .281 in the first set – its best percentage of any frame on the night.
 
The second set featured 12 tie scores, but Clarion had a better go of it at the start – eventually building a 17-12 lead. The Raiders countered, taking a 20-19 advantage, but neither team would grab a two-point lead until the set ended. SU served for the set at 24-23 but could not capitalize, and both teams would continually trade points until Taylor Braunagel closed out the second set for Clarion with back-to-back kills at 27-27.
 
SU went from 3-3 to 7-3 in the third set with four points on Goerl's serve, benefitting from three attack errors. The Golden Eagles stormed back and grabbed a 13-11 lead and forced an SU timeout, but the Raiders responded with six straight points (five on Peluso's serve) to lead 17-13 and eventually take the frame by four points.
 
But the sequence that clinched the conference title for the Raiders came off a tremendous service run by Gottshall. Trailing 18-16 in the fourth set, the Raiders scored eight straight points on Gottshall's serve to come within the point of conference glory. DeFloria had three kills on the run, while Athey and Nolan combined for two blocks.
 
After one Clarion kill, Athey ran a right-side slide down the line to give SU the conference crown.
 
Shippensburg competed in the PSAC Championship match for the first time since 2004, Piscotty's inaugural season, and just the third time since 1989.
 
Athey has 367 block assists now for her career – putting her eighth all-time among the PSAC career record books. Gottshall and Athey have 837 career block assists between them.
 
Plank now has 1,658 career digs, 25 shy of tying Michelle Doughty (2002-05) for third in SU's record books. Nolan is now third in SU history for assists (3,796) and sixth in school history for block assists (211).
 
The 2015 NCAA Division II selection show airs at 7:30 p.m. Monday on ncaa.com. All Shippensburg will have to do is sit back and see what seed it is assigned.