The UAA volleyball team gets to enjoy the view from the top for the next week, if not longer.
The Seawolves vaulted into first place in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference on Saturday with a tidy 25-18, 25-18, 25-22 win over last-place Western Oregon.
Coupled with Northwest Nazarene's loss to Western Washington on Saturday, the victory puts UAA atop the league standings with a 7-1 record. Northwest Nazarene, the only GNAC team to beat the Seawolves this season, is 6-1, giving UAA a half-game lead over the Crusaders.
The usual suspects delivered for the Seawolves in a 90-minute match during which coach Chris Green used just eight players.
Julia Mackey, a junior from Fairbanks, pounded 14 kills on 25 attempts for a match-high attack percentage of .440. Brooke Pottle, a senior from Arizona, supplied a double-double with 10 kills and 11 digs. Morgan Hooe, a sophomore from Anchorage, remained hot with 34 assists, 13 digs, five kills and 14 attempts for a .357 percentage, and two block assists. Quinn Barker, a senior from California, racked up 20 digs.
And although Katelynn Zanders, a junior from Anchorage, had a subpar hitting night -- she had eight kills and six errors on 34 attempts for a .059 attack percentage -- she compensated by service all four of UAA's aces.
Western Oregon (2-13 overall, 0-7 GNAC) was led by Alisha Battinson's 12 kills and 11 digs.
Playing in front of an Alaska Airlines Center crowd of nearly 900, UAA was seldom threatened while earning its third win in a row. It's the third three-match winning streak this season for the Seawolves, who will try to make it four straight Saturday afternoon when they host rival UAF, which hasn't registered a win over the UAA since 2010.
In running their overall record to 13-3, the Seawolves matched the program-best 16-match record established by the 1988 team.