Junior setter Meghan Wood eclipsed 1000 career assists in the volleyball team’s loss to Salisbury on Sept. 26. Wood recorded 23 assists in the match and currently has 328 assists on the year. She is just the eighth player in Virginia Wesleyan program history to reach this milestone.
Wood has found herself in the rotation since her freshman year. She competed for, and successfully secured, the spot of second setter her freshman year and appeared in 20 matches. Her sophomore year she was again the second setter, behind All-ODAC honoree Emilee Pierson, and appeared in all 29 games. In her current junior season, Wood has taken the reigns as the starting setter and leads the team in assists.
“Meghan has improved so much in her years here at Virginia Wesleyan. When I recruited her I knew she was a good setter, I knew she was a good player, she has just – her demeanor on the court, her confidence level, her skill – has all improved in her three years here,” head coach Andrea Hoover-Erbig said.
Wood accredits a lot of her success to her teammates’ abilities to get her passes and finish plays. “If they weren’t putting the ball down I wouldn’t get any assists; I give that all to them,” Wood said.
Wood gave a lot of credit to her teammates, which is representative of the team’s chemistry as a whole, but also representative of the chemistry between the close-knit junior class that came in with Wood. This is her third season playing with Alyssa Taylor, Sarah Brush, Elizabeth Britton, Lauren Topper and Amber Matalus – all see time on the floor this season, and all mesh well together on the court.
Teammate and fellow classmate Amber Matalus explained how exciting it was to watch Wood get 1000 assists. “That was just a really cool experience to share with her because she’s only the eighth player to do it,” Matalus said.
Wood has been instrumental in the team’s untarnished ODAC record so far. She had a career-high 39 assists against Shenandoah, 23 against Emory and Henry and 20 against Guilford.
“As of now, we’re undefeated in the ODAC, and we’re the only ones right now, so that just gives us confidence in the fact that we know we could end up being the first seed in the ODAC’s and host ODAC’s, so that definitely motivates me and motivates my teammates,” Wood said.
She currently sits eighth all-time for assists, and is only 177 behind 2011-12 graduate Mallory Slade.
Megan Sherman
mrsherman@vwu.edu
