Almost one month ago to the day, the Dayton Flyers volleyball team dropped their last match of the season in a 3-1 loss to Rhode Island in Kingston, RI. Pinning the lone loss on the Dayton conference record, the Rams were looking to make it a clean sweep Saturday afternoon at the Frericks Center, but Coach Pete Hoyer’s team exacted revenge in a big way by topping the Rams 3-1 (30-26, 24-30, 30-25, 30-27) in a highly contested match between the two Atlantic-10 heavyweights. Senior outside hitter Xinxin Zhang had a huge day, racking up a career-best 24 kills and coming up with big putaways when the Flyers needed them most.

With the win, the Flyers continue their hot play and push their winning streak to 10 straight, and are now winners of 17 of their last 19 contests after starting the year 0-2. Dayton also moves into sole possession of first place with a record of 17-4 (10-1).

The first game was a back and forth affair as both sides traded leads throughout. Xinxin Zhang started off hot and stayed hot as she put away several kills to ignite the Flyers early. Dayton knew she had the hot hand and exploited it, but senior Katie Ferriell — a recent addition to the 1000 kill club — and sophomore transfer Erin Treadway (Ohio State) were equally important cogs as Dayton pulled away in the final points to take the first game 30-26.

Rhode Island appeared to settle down in game two and the Flyers committed a few too many unforced errors to get behind for most of the game. With rally scoring in place, Dayton hurt themselves with errant serves and a couple miscommunications in the front line, but to the Rams credit, they blocked well and put most of their chances away with strong kills.

Game three is the momentum game and whoever took over and gained a 2-1 advantage heading into game four would be in great shape to take the match. The Flyers returned to what worked well in the first game by dialing in Zhang’s sledgehammer overhead spike to give Dayton a small but important lead most of the way. The Rams had a couple nifty blocks that found the back corner of the Flyer side of the net to keep them in contention, but once again, Dayton was too much and took game three 30-25.

Game four was controlled by Rhode Island. The Flyers got down early and Coach Hoyer used a timeout to break the slide a bit later. It looked like the Rams would push the match to a deciding game five, and with a 24-19 lead, it didn’t look especially good for the Flyers. Up to that point, the last 8-10 points of the game were traded one for one and UD was treading water, but the Flyers regained the sideout and used their serve to retake the lead at 26-25 by ripping off six straight points. The Flyers were in the driver’s seat to put a fork in things and that’s exactly what they did. As the Frericks Center crowd grew loud and clapped in unison on match point, freshman Christy Utnage dinked a ball diagonally across the net where the Rams couldn’t dig it out, giving Dayton a 30-27 win and 3-1 match victory to the delight of the rowdy and vocal Flyer faithful.

The Rams fall to 13-9 (9-3), but like the Flyers, were on fire coming into the weekend. URI started the year 0-6 but had a 10-match winning streak snapped Friday night at Xavier. The Muskies, who are right behind UD in the conference standings, host the Flyers in the near future and are looking for revenge of their own after Dayton clobbered them 3-0 at the Frericks Center earlier in the season. The Muskies currently sit at a gaudy 18-2 (8-2), but those two conference losses put them behind the Flyers in the A-10 race.

Dayton stays unbeaten at home at 9-0. They travel to Philadelphia next weekend to battle Temple and LaSalle and hope to remain in first place as they gun for a #1 seed in the A-10 Tournament.