Volleyball Opens Home Schedule With Marist & Princeton

PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers volleyball is home this week at the College Ave Gym to close out nonconference play. The Scarlet Knights host Marist on Wednesday, Sept. 13 and Princeton on Friday, Sept. 15 on Friday. Both matches begin at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
 

• PRINCETON – “Friday With The Freshmen” –  Join the Scarlet Knight freshmen on the court for a post-match meet & greet.

• Rutgers enters the week at 7-1 marking the program’s best start since 2012. Last week, the Scarlet Knights earned a 3-1 win at Rider that gave head coach Caitlin Schweihofer her 100th career win, a sweep of Morgan State and a 3-1 victory at Columbia with redshirt sophomore Alissa Kinkela capturing the fifth-best hitting percentage in a match in school history.
• Kinkela leads the offense with 2.17 k/s and a .368 hitting percentage and is second at the net with 0.90 b/s. Senior middle Kristina Grkovic is second on the squad at 2.30 k/s along with a team-leading 13 aces, which included a career-high tying five against N.C. State. She is currently ranked ninth in the Big Ten at the service line. The Belgrade, Serbia native also leads the block at 1.17 b/s and is among RU’s rally-era career leaders in the category. .
• Fifth-year senior Alyssa Nayar and redshirt junior Chelsea Harvey aid the attack on the set with. Nayar is averaging 8.56 helpers per set and is second on the team with 2.84 d/s. Harvey is putting up 8.56 a/s including averaging 10.83 over last week’s three games.
• Senior libero Madyson Chitty is currently logging 3.60 d/s and checks in ninth in the Big Ten. The Lewis Center, Ohio native, who is fifth in the rally era in career digs, is 12 away from joining the 1,000 career dig club.
• Rutgers returns nine letterwinners and welcomes six newcomers to the court for the 2023 campaign.
• Eighty-four percent of last year’s attack is back including Kinkella who recorded a team-leading 2.76 k/s and Humphrey, who as a rookie collected 2.54 k/s. Kinkela totaled 301 kills in 2022 marking the ninth-most by a Scarlet Knight in a rally-era season. Humphrey also had another notable record book entry as she tied for most kills in a rally-era three-set match with 18 kills against the College of Charleston.
• On this year’s schedule, seven opponents appear on the Preseason…