The Muhlenberg volleyball swept its way past rival Moravian, 3-0, to earn the first Matte Award point of 2017-18.
 
The Mules (8-2) built early leads in each of the three sets and battled past many Moravian rallies to earn victories of 25-22, 25-18, 25-23 in the match. The win over the Greyhounds (2-6) marks Muhlenberg's sixth straight win over its Lehigh Valley rival.
 
Junior Kelly Tornetta led the Mule attack with a match-high 14 kills to go with 11 digs for a double-double, the 12th of her career and fourth this season. Junior Shannon Hubert finished with 31 assists and a team-high 18 digs, pushing her past 700 digs for her career. Sophomore Stefanie Mutter recorded nine kills and led the Mules with four blocks.
 
Mutter (pictured above) notched Muhlenberg's first two kills of the match, and Tornetta's first three kills helped the home team stake out an 11-9 lead in the first stanza. Hubert then served up an ace and three more Mutter kills increased the advantage to 15-12. Moravian later came back to within two before junior Erica Schultz served one of her three aces to give the Mules a three-point lead they would carry through the rest of the set.
 
The Mules jumped in front again in the second set, but the Greyhounds launched a rally midway through the stanza to tie it at 18-18. Sophomore Madison Forrest then recorded a kill on the next point that started a 7-0 run for the Mules to close the set in their favor.
 
The third set was a back-and-forth battle until Muhlenberg started a rally down by one with a kill from Forrest, one of six for her in the match. Two straight kills by Tornetta put the Mules up 24-22, and after a Moravian point, another Tornetta attack resulted in a Muhlenberg match victory.
 
Freshmen Rebecca Shear and Maya Illovsky each made an impact on the back line, with Shear digging out 11 attacks and Illovsky notching nine digs.

Muhlenberg has won the Matte Award contest outright each of the past three seasons and has won or shared the Matte Award in 13 of the last 14 years. The next scheduled Matte Award contest is a women's tennis match Tuesday hosted at Muhlenberg.