The draft for Week 2 of Athletes Unlimited’s volleyball season effectively dismantled the purple gang that terrorized its competition in the opening round, spreading the wealth of its seven starters among the league’s four teams.
The juggernaut crew in the purple jerseys assembled by captain Leah Edmond to kick off AU’s five-week schedule produced all four of the captains, that status having been determined by the players who finished 1 through 4 on the leaderboard.
In a format that shuffles its squads weekly, outside hitter Edmond, OH Alli Linnehan, libero Morgan Hentz and setter Sydney Hilley morphed from Week 1 teammates to the opposition. After the draft conducted on Tuesday, Edmond had retained opposite Genesis Collazo, Hentz would continue to defend behind middle hitter Jenna Rosenthal’s huge block, and Hilley could stay connected with middle Danielle Hart, her college mate at Wisconsin.
Odds are long that any of the four new lineups will match Team Edmond’s first-week results, a rare 3-0 record in matches and 8-1 mark in sets that generated 500 out of a possible 540 “team points,” 60 for each aggregate-score match victory and 40 for each winning set.
Week 2 schedule
Athletes Unlimited’s second-week round-robin will be held Friday, Sunday and Monday, with five matches streamed on ESPN+ and the nightcap on Monday aired on cable ESPNU. All times are Eastern:
Friday, October 13
Team Hentz vs. Team Linnehan, 7 p.m., ESPN+
Team Edmond vs. Team Hilley, 9:30 p.m., ESPN+
Sunday, October 15
Team Hilley vs. Team Linnehan, 7 p.m., ESPN+
Team Hentz vs. Team Edmond, 9:30, ESPN+
Monday, October 15
Team Hilley vs. Team Hentz, 7 p.m., ESPN+
Team Linnehan vs. Team Edmond, 9:30 p.m., ESPNU
The points factor
The team component had such influence on the leaderboard that the top scorer in individual “stat points,” explosive veteran Dominican outside Bethania De La Cruz, who tacked on 100 “MVP points,” could climb no higher than seventh, slotting behind the four Week 2 captains, plus Collazo and Hart. Thus ended De La Cruz’s record streak of 10 for wearing an AU captain’s mantle that dated to the inaugural 2021 season.
Hentz parlayed 500 team points, 321 stat points and 60 MVP points to a third-place finish on the leaderboard, becoming the first libero to qualify as an AU captain through its scoring system that is weighted toward pin hitters and setters. She was…
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