The University of Memphis volleyball team seized its 15th victory of the season on Nov. 29. The win marked the team's Senior Night and the final game of the season.
Fans celebrated Katie Meyer, Megan Pulido and Viktorija Teivane during the game.
Head U of M volleyball coach April Jauregui said it was special to send off the seniors with a win.
"We try to preach to our players that every win is important and every match is important, but I won't lie, it is great to get a win on Senior Night and win their last game," Jauregui said.
In the inaugural season of the American Athletic Conference, Memphis finished with a 7-11 conference record and a 15-17 overall record. The Tigers lost three significant contributors entering the 2013 season, but Jauregui said she felt good about the strides the team made this season.
"Coming into it, there were a lot of things up in the air," she said. "Of course, I would have liked to have seen more notches in the win column, but we lost probably 65 percent of last year's offense."
This year, the team spent the season trying to replace what offense they lost while trying to regain some of the same chemistry among players.
With one senior who played in more than 60 sets graduating, next year's team will need to find a replacement for Teivane.
Lauren Hawkins and Alexis Wesley are two of the building blocks for the future of the Memphis program. Both players were named to the All-Conference Second Team. Jauregui pointed to their achievements as a measuring stick for the team's growth.
"Across the board we improved," she said. "We had two players named to all-conference and that shows some improvement. We improved not only in talent but in chemistry as well. If every player improves as an individual, we are a better team."
Redshirt junior Aleksandra Petronijevic also earned recognition for her performance this season. She broke the Tigers' single-game and season records for digs in the last week of competition.
With 38 digs against University of Central Florida last Wednesday, Petronijevic broke the single-game record and put herself in position to break the season record in the last game of the year against University of South Florida. In the victory, the redshirt junior added 23 more digs to her career stats and set a new single-season record with 645 total.
"She (Petronijevic) has never been one to promote herself and she's always been about the team," Jauregui said. "I feel great as a coach when a player that is like that gets an individual award. I'm proud of her and look forward to the opportunity to set up a great senior season for her next year."
