Tears don’t normally well up in Reese Booth’s eyes when her team bus pulls up to whatever hotel they’ll be staying at for the weekend. But that’s only because her mom isn’t always going to be there to meet her in the lobby like she was on Friday night in Louisville as Creighton and Northern Iowa arrived in town ahead of their Saturday afternoon clash in the opening match of the 2024 Cardinal Classic.
When daughter, Reese — a true freshman setter for the Panthers — got to see her mom in person for the first time since her parents dropped her off in Cedar Falls over the summer, she wasn’t surprised when her eyes welled up. She says she’s an emotional person anyway, but this moment was admittedly a little heavier than a typical mother-daughter reunion after a few months of college life.
“I think it was just hard knowing that this is the only time she’s seen me all season,” Reese said. “That’s where the emotion comes into play because it really hasn’t been that long since I’ve seen her. It’s just that this is the one opportunity all season.”
The match itself wasn’t any different for Kirsten, who is now three weeks into her 22nd year as Creighton’s head coach — a role she undertook years before Reese, her oldest of three girls, was even born.
“I kind of noticed when she’d go in, but I definitely was not analyzing her play like I am when I’m watching as a parent,” she said. “I was really locked into our team.”
Except for the rally in the third set where Creighton middle blocker Kiara Reinhardt planted her in the front row with a kill off of a Northern Iowa overpass, which prompted the one and only time the fifth-year senior will ever look over to her head coach and apologize for getting a kill.
Both head coach and mom had a good laugh about that one after the match.
“I said, ‘what are you doing? Going after my daughter?”
That was one of the only things that had the leader of the 9th-ranked Bluejays in light-hearted mood after the match. Despite Creighton beating their old Missouri Valley Conference rivals in straight sets 25-15, 25-20, 25-20 to improve to 6-1 on the season and rebound from Tuesday night’s five-set loss at No. 4 Nebraska, it wasn’t the typical clean and consistent “Creighton Volleyball” throughout the afternoon.
“We were really up and down,” Booth said. “It was a tough place to play, because it’s a huge arena and there was very little crowd, so we had to create our own energy, and I thought we were just okay at that.
“I thought Northern Iowa really responded in [sets] two and three and gave us some problems. We’re going to have to be cleaner as the weekend goes on.”
Senior All-American outside hitter Norah Sis led the team with a match-high 13 kills, five of which came in a first set where CU outhit the Panthers .375 to .000. That, however, was the only set where the Jays were able to terminate at a .300 or better clip as a team. Despite senior setter Kendra Wait producing her fourth consecutive double-double with 31 assists and 11 digs, Creighton’s offense finished with just a .216 attack percentage.
“We were just going for it,” Reinhardt said of the first set efficiency. “Kendra was moving the ball around really well, so she got a lot of splits for our hitters. I feel like we were just going for it and just being really aggressive.”
The second and third sets were, as Booth said, up and down.
Through the first 27 rallies of set two, Creighton trailed UNI 14-13 and was hitting .120 through their first 25 swings. The hit .583 as a team with seven kills on 12 error-free swings over the final 20 rallies to pull out the 25-20 win and secure the 2-0 match lead.
Sis was particularly sharp down the stretch of that one with a go-ahead kill on the 33rd rally and a pair of aces sandwich around a Northern Iowa timeout to open up a 21-18 lead.
“Those were big moment plays,” Booth said. “Several people did that at different times. You have to make plays at end game, and she separated it.”
Reinhardt made that separation count emphatically with three rejections in a row from the left, middle, and right side of the net on set point before UNI senior outside hitter Kira Fallert finally sprayed one wide down the line to end the rally and give game two to the Jays.
“We had just been talking about getting good and productive block touches and just trying to better our block setup,” Reinhardt said of her presence at the net on the set-clincher. “That whole set we were trying to work on their pins — one was hitting line, and one was hitting cross. We were all talking about it at the front of the net, so it felt really good.”
The third set coming out of intermission was Creighton’s least efficient of the entire match. They hit just .048 as a team with 10 attack errors — the most they’ve had in any set so far this season.
Luckily, they had an unsung hero step up in game three as true freshman defensive specialist Alivia Hausmann stepped up behind the service line after a kill by senior middle blocker Elise Goetzinger and set the tone for a 10-0 run, which included the first three aces of her young career.
“She’s been serving well in practice, and we’ve talked about trying some different people,” Booth said of Hausmann’s lengthy scoring run behind the line. “She stepped up and did a great job.”
Before her rotation was finished, Creighton had turned a 4-2 deficit into an 11-4 lead and forced Northern Iowa to burn through both of their timeouts to try to ice the freshman.
“I was just focusing on my routine,” Hausmann said “How many times I hit the ball, how many times I spin the ball, and my toss. I was just focusing on those key things.”
The final 30 rallies were back and forth with each team rattling off a pair of scoring runs before CU settled on the 25-20 victory to claim the match and start off their first weekend away from D.J. Sokol Arena in the win the column.
The afternoon also wasn’t complete without one more mother-daughter moment for the Booth family as Kirsten ducked under the net at the end of the handshake line to give Reese a hug.
“I just told her that I love her. I told the whole UNI team as we went through that now I get to be your biggest fan.”
Both teams will be back in action at the KFC Yum! Center tomorrow as No. 9 Creighton (6-1) will face Rice (4-1) at 10:00 a.m. (CT) on ESPN+ and Northern Iowa (4-3) will take on No. 4 Louisville (5-1) following the conclusion of the Bluejays-Owls on the ACC Network.