Charm City Challenge presented by Residence Inn Owings Mills
Location	Baltimore, Maryland | Reitz Arena
Getting There	Directions
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Game Notes	Loyola
Opponent	Canisius Golden Griffins
Date	Friday, September 13, 2019
Time	12:30 p.m.
Online Media	Live Stats | Patriot League Network
Opponent	Charlotte 49ers
Date	Friday, September 13, 2019
Time	7:00 p.m.
Online Media	Live Stats | Patriot League Network
Opponent	UMBC Retrievers
Date	Saturday, September 14, 2019
Time	2:00 p.m.
Online Media	Live Stats | Patriot League Network

Home Schedule Opens With Charm City Challenge

• Loyola opens its home schedule this weekend when it hosts the Charm City Challenge presented by Residence Inn Owings Mills. The Greyhounds will host six games in the event, competing against Canisius College, UNC Charlotte and UMBC on Friday and Saturday.
• The Greyhounds take on Canisius on Friday at 12:30 p.m., followed by a 7 p.m. game that night against Charlotte. They wrap-up the tournament Saturday with a 2 p.m. outing against UMBC.
• In other matches, Charlotte will take on UMBC at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, and the Retrievers will then play Canisius that evening at 5 o'clock. Charlotte and Canisius square off at 12 noon on Saturday.
• All six matches in the tournament will be broadcast live on the Patriot League Network.

Last Time Out

• Loyola took a 13-9 lead in the fifth set Tuesday night at Howard, and the Greyhounds parlayed the cushion into a 16-14 vicotry in the deciding game to beat the preseason MEAC North Division favorite, 25-17, 25-22, 20-25, 23-25, 16-14, in Washington, D.C.
• Mackenzie Fedota and Ann Ernst put up a block for the Greyhounds (2-5 overall), turning back Howard's Kailyn Williams to make it 13-9, but the Bison (2-6) scored three-consecutive points to draw within one on a kill by Jurnee Tipton. Loyola sided out on a Howard service error, setting up match-point for the Greyhounds, but a Kira Porter kill and a Loyola hitting miscue tied the set at 14-14. The Greyhounds again sided out with a Bison service error, and a bad set by Howard decided the match point in Loyola's favor.
• Ernst finished with a team-high 17 kills to go with four total blocks, and Cat Vaccaro posted nine kills. Molly Jarvis put away seven kills and had a match-high seven blocks.

Career-High To Start

• Ann Ernst came out of the gates with a strong performance for the Greyhounds against Furman in the first match of 2019. She posted a career-best 26 kills against the Paladins to top her previous best of 24 she put away against Akron her freshman year.
• Against Montana State, Ernst became the first Loyola player to reach 1,200 career kills since the NCAA transitioned to 25-point rally scoring. This year, she is averaging 3.87 kills per set, a career-high number.
• Over her last 16 matches of 2018, dating back to the Howard contest on September 25, Ernst put away 250 kills for an average of 3.79 per set. She also averaged 2.82 digs during that frame. 
• Ernst led the Patriot League in kills per set last season (3.58), and her .192 hitting percentage was more than 40 points higher than her .148 career mark. Heading into the season, Ernst had hit .125 in her first two campaigns, but last year, she swung at a .192 clip while having a career-low number of errors to go with a career-high number of attack attempts.
• Over the course of her three-plus seasons – Ernst has played in 93 career matches – she has recorded 10 or more kills 68 times (73.1 percent of the time), 15 or more kills 39 times (41.9) and 20 or more 11 times (11.8).

Hamilton Highlights

• Ernst and Forsythe both earned All-Patriot League honors a year ago, but much of the Greyhounds success came from the steady play of outside hitter Abby Hamilton. In her freshman year, she averaged 2.53 kills and 1.80 digs per set. Her hitting percentage of .180 is improved from her 2018 mark of .172.
• She posted 17 kills and 15 digs in the 2019 season-opener against Furman. Hamilton later then earned All-Tournament honors at the Rambler Classic after hitting .203 and averaging 2.86 from the outside.

Let's Play Some More

• Of the Greyhounds' seven matches this year, five have gone to four or five sets with only the contests against Coastal Carolina and Virginia resulting in three-set decisions.
• Each of the last four matches – Loyola Chicago (5), Western Michigan (5), Montana State (4) and Howard (5) – have gone to four or five.
• The Greyhounds' 30 sets played this year are the most by any team in the Patriot LEague.

Looking Back

• The Greyhounds had their most successful season since joining the Patriot League in 2018, finishing in a tie for third in the conference and reaching the four-team Patriot League Championships for the first time since joining the league in 2013.
• Overall, Loyola went 14-16 during the year and 9-7 in Patriot League action.

Records In The Rear-View Mirror

• During the first weekend of November 2018, Katie Forsythe set a pair of single-season digs records, rewriting history at both the school and conference levels. In Loyola's win at College of the Holy Cross, her 14th and final dig gave her 613 to break the Patriot League record set by Bucknell's Kristen Sydlowski in 2006. The next night, in a five-set win at the U.S. Military Academy, Forsythe totaled 23 digs, passing Brittany Born's school record of 626 digs in 2007 in the process.
• She ended the year by earning All-Patriot League First Team honors and becoming the first player in conference history to earn Rookie and Libero of the Year recognition. She finished 2018 fourth in NCAA Division I in digs per set (5.86) and seventh in total digs (697).
• During the 2018 season, Forsythe earned Patriot League Rookie of the Week honors six times and was named the VolleyMob.com National Player of the Week in October. She had 13 or more digs in all 29 of the Greyhounds' matches, 20 or more 20 times, six matches with 30-plus and two with 41 or more. In her third career game, the Perry, Ohio-native set the school record with 41 digs in a match against Towson University. She broke that later in the season, tallying 42 in October against College of the Holy Cross.
• She opened the 2019 campaign in much the same fashion, earning All-Tournament Honors at the Cavalier Classic by averaging 5.64 digs per set.