BLOOMINGTON, Ill.- UW-Oshkosh women's volleyball is the 2025 NCAA Division III national champion!
The Titans (34-3) completed their perfect national tournament with a 3-0 win over the University of La Verne (Calif.) at the Shirk Center on the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University on Saturday (Dec. 6). They won by set scores of 25-17, 25-22, 25-21. The neutral site match had a home court feeling as friends, family, fellow student-athletes, and coaches packed the arena and cheered on the Titans all through the historic match.
While being the first national championship in program history, it is also the 51st in UW-Oshkosh history, the first Division III title since men's basketball won the 2019 championship and the first women's Division III title since women's track & field won the 2014 indoor championship. Since 2020, UW-Oshkosh has claimed four national championships; the remaining three were won by women's gymnastics at the National Collegiate Gymnastics Association Championship.
The championship match appearance was Oshkosh's second in program history and the first since falling to Washington University in St. Louis (Mo.) in the 1994 title match.
The Titans entered Saturday on an 18-set winning streak dating back to the WIAC Tournament championship match against UW-Eau Claire at Kolf Sport Center on November 15 and a 37-22 all-time record in the national championship. After the win in Saturday's championship match, they became the first program since 2004 to not drop a set in the national tournament.
Oshkosh hit .195 in the three-set match and held the Leopards (30-3) to a .140 attack percentage. While La Verne led 9-7 in team blocks and 62-57 in digs, the Titans held advantages of 54-44 in points, 43-33 in kills, 4-2 in service aces, and 37-32 in assists.
Riley Borrowman (Oswego, Ill./Oswego) got the first set going with a light tap over the net and into a large gap between defenders. The Titans then used a pair of three-point runs to create an early 9-3 lead and force a La Verne timeout. They recorded two more points out of the timeout before La Verne went on a 4-0 run to make the score 11-7. The Leopards got within three points; however, Oshkosh responded with a 5-1 run that included three kills by
Samantha Perlberg (Chippewa Falls/Chippewa Falls). The deficit hovered around six points until a service error by the Leopards gave Oshkosh the serve and Borrowman bookended the set with her third kill.
La Verne scored on the first two serves of the second set and retained the lead, fighting off 4-4, 9-9 and 10-10 ties before reclaiming the edge following a Perlberg and
Lauren Grier (Fond du Lac/Fond du Lac) combination block to make the score 11-10. Continuing the back-and-fourth set, Oshkosh and La Verne got knotted up 10 more times at each point as neither team could score more than twice in a row. Perlberg broke the streak of ties with an ace and after La Verne called its first timeout,
Grace Juergens (Lockport, Ill./Lockport Community) and Grier tallied kills of their own to make the score 23-20. Grier and Juergens each followed a Leopard point with the 24th and 25th points of the match. Both were kills.
Oshkosh and La Verne traded service errors to begin the third set before the trended of tied scores continued five more times until the Leopards put together a three-point spurt to make the score 11-8. They led by 15-11 headed into the timeout, however the Titans flipped a switch out of the break and went 7-1 to lead 18-16.
Maren Motz (Hartland/Arrowhead Union) and Perlberg added two kills in a 3-0 spurt that brought the Titans past the 20-point mark of the set
Perlberg registered her 22nd double-double in 36 matches, notching 16 kills on 41 attacks with seven errors and dug 13 attacks while adding a service ace and four blocks. Perlberg, who had reset the Oshkosh single-season total attacks record in the semifinal, extended her record past Jean Harmsen's 1997 mark of 1,429 with 41 in the championship match for a total of 1,472 on the season.
Juergens also reached double-digit kills for the 19th time with 10. She scored twice from the service line, had four digs, and blocked a shot.
In their final match in yellow and gold,
Izzy Coon (Fond du Lac/St. Mary's Springs Academy) and
Jaclyn Dutkiewicz (Franklin/Franklin) registered 17 and 13 assists, respectively. Dutkiewicz added 13 digs and Coon had eight.
Lauren Grier (Fond du Lac/Fond du Lac) joined Perlberg with four block assists and Borrowman tallied three total (one solo).
Callie Panasuk (Oak Creek/Oak Creek) was the third Titan with double-digit digs with 10 to cap off her fantastic freshman campaign.
After the championship concluded, Coon, Grier, Panasuk, and Perlberg were all named to the all-tournament team Perlberg was selected as the championship's most outstanding player.
