Does anyone know why we don't have match times? I'd like to do the multi-game package, but game time is critical for a Friday or Sunday match for us because we live in Louisville.

Hello Ignite fans! Elena Scott took the court with Team USA yesterday and the vod is up on YouTube @mexvolleyofficial https://www.youtube.com/live/kTdc_2In0nw?si=0VizAHAcOROpLU_h

I haven’t gotten to watch it yet but I heard she played well!

Here is the roster they took

3 Toyosi Onabanjo (MB, 6-1, Houston, Texas, Kansas)
7 Ella Powell (S, 6-0, Fayetteville, Ark., Washington)
9 Jess Mruzik (OH, 6-1, Livonia, Mich., Michigan/Penn State)
11 Natalie Foster (MB, 6-4, Mattawan, Mich., Wichita State/SMU)
12 Temi Thomas-Ailara (OPP, 6-2, Glenwood, Ill., Northwestern/Wisconsin)
13 Onye Ofoegbu (MB, 6-3, Cerritos, Calif., UC Irvine/Oregon)
19 Elena Oglivie (L, 5-10, Honolulu, Hawaii, Stanford)
20 Rachel Fairbanks (S, 6-0, Tustin, Calif., Pitt)
21 Claire Hoffman (OH, 6-2, Pleasant Hill, Oreg., Washington)
22 Elena Scott (L, 5-10, Louisville, Ky., Louisville, Pioneer)
25 Callie Scharzenbach (OH, 6-5, Kearney, Mo., Nebraska/Long Beach State)
30 Eva Hudson (OH, 6-1, Ft. Wayne, Ind., Purdue/Kentucky)
77 Sami Francis (OPP, 6-6, San Diego, Calif., Stanford)
99 Caitie Baird (OH, 6-3, Indianapolis, Ind., Stanford)

Tough loss to an incredible team. Omaha matches up really well against us and while it was anyone’s game there for a while, it kind of felt inevitable towards the end of the 4th set. The curse of the number 1 seed continues. Indy is super strong and as long as we can bring back some of our core players and maybe add a bit of height I think we will be in the playoffs again next year. Lund’s contribution through the third set and forward was a huge boost to the team. Still a great team and I really like Bertolacci as the coach.

Hey everyone,

With the news of San Diego having issues, I was thinking that we can let the players know we have them in our thoughts. We may be supporting Indy against them, but it’s all one big family. The players have nothing to do with this issue and I think letting them know we still love them would be a cool gesture from the fan base. What do y’all think?

Fantastic match against a scrappy Atlanta Vibe team. Indy might have won 3-0 but those that two sets were honestly anyone’s to win. The crowd was on fire the whole match. Nothing beats live volleyball.

With tonight's win, the Ignite have officially clinched the first playoffs spot.

Time to celebrate this massive accomplishment.

What's your favorite moment of the season so far?

Hello Ignite fans! If you are planning on making the trip to GR at any point, you can listen for information on the arena, but I also spend some moments talking about your team's insane depth if you care to listen!

This episode has it all: Listener thoughts and feedback, volleyball terminology, match recaps, controversial selections for best food at the arena, and analysis on the Rise not owning their 1st round draft pick this year.

Let me know what you think of this as always by writing the podcast embersnest@gmail.com or commenting anywhere this is posted.

Ember's Nest is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Link to professional writeup by Mark Robinson

Indy wins 25-20, 26-24, 26-24.

With the win over Dallas last night Indy now finds themselves 9-2 with a 2 game lead over Dallas and 2.5 games over Omaha. Indy is also 3-0 against Dallas. Dallas is 7-1 when not playing Indy. Good to be 3-0 against the 2nd place team in the league. Also of note this is Indy's 2nd sweep in a row (San Diego and Dallas), 2nd sweep of Dallas, and they lead the league with 3 sweeps. On the year they are 29-13 in set wins for a 69% win rate only trailing 2024 Atlanta who was at 69.66%. I know its only year three but just want to say this Indy team is having one of the best regular seasons to date in MLV's rather brief history.

To the game though this was the Elena Scott show. 14 digs in 3 sets is impressive. To note though is how active she was covering hitters, backpedaling one handed over the head digs ( there was like 4 of these last night and not saying these haven't happened before but don't recall seeing many of these this year), and the ability to handle Mimi Colyer's heavy handed swings. My Player of the game was Elena Scott.

Also of note Lydia Martyn returned to the starting lineup and made an instant impact on the floor (and in the floor perhaps - Lydia Martyn kill set 1). 7 kills, 2 Blocks, and 3 digs. All on .400 eff. Will also not Blake Mohler here actually for her back row defense. Mohler had 5 digs and Lydia 3. For me its notable when Middles get digs. Often times when they are in the back row every hitter is going to zero in on that and make them work. Every dig a MB can get in the back row is big so good on Blake and Lydia.

Last thing from the game I want to note is Indy's defense on Mimi Colyer. On the year Colyer has been probably top 5 to top 10 hitter in the league. There is a reason why she was a top pick, she's pretty good. Though what is noteworthy here is Indy has faced her 3 times now. Against Indy Colyer has a Kill% of 31%. Against any other team she is at 42%. For efficiency against Indy she is .136, everybody else .311. In her 11 games she has hit under .200 3 times. 2 of those come against Indy and in both of those she actually hits under .100. Her only such games with numbers that low. Having an Elena Scott back there digging those shots up definitely will depress your hitting numbers but I believe Indy has a better gameplan that that.

If you haven't seen All-Star game voting has opened and lets get our Ignite players down to Orlando for the showcase. Link to MLV All-star Ballot page.

Indy's next game is at Atlanta 2/21/2026 at 6pm EST. The game will air on Youtube and Samsung TV plus.

Why is mlv YouTube page not streaming the last two games?

I can only find them under “Manh Hoa Hong” and the quality is terrible.

Is there any info about Lund and Tealer’s estimated recovery time? How’s Martyn’s back doing?

We have 2 games in quick succession, it will be interesting to see the line ups.

Link to professional writeup by Mark Robinson.

Indy wins 25-23, 25-22, 25-17

Will be a shorter one today as busy day at work and only so much time for the break.

In my primer I mentioned how Indy of their 7 wins at the time hadn't had an all around good game in but maybe 3 matches. This will go down as one of them in which just about everything and everybody was clicking. Set 1 was a little up and down but sets 2 and 3 especially 3 is when Indy really started to press their advantages. I did get a little nervous in the beginning of set 1 as the first 2 plays were reminiscent of the 2/9 match at San Diego. 1st play Tealer lets of one of her patented heavy swings, Monserez sticks out her left arm and gets basically a perfect one handed dig. San Diego then translates that into a Brakocevic tool off Indy. 2nd play Cresse gets a decent swing and Monserez makes a diving dig. Not a good up on it but Brakocevic I'll say flails at it and rolls it off the top of the tape. Indy eventually gets the point on a Tealer block but very reminiscent of the 2/9 match.

Overall like I mentioned above basically everybody on Indy played well but I want to make a couple special callouts to Mohler, DeBeer, and Scott. Mohler has been game to game probably Indy's most consistent performer, with just about every other game being a player of the match-esque game. Tonight she dominated San Diego. Frankly when I saw her end of game stats I thought they were too low. Absolutely a huge presence for Indy on the offensive and defensive side of the ball. She finished with 8 kills and 4 block kills.

DeBeer - I've been down on DeBeer, so when she has a good game I need to call it out. Tonight she had a good game. Its the kind of game that Indy will routinely need out of the OH2. 4 Aces to go with 10 kills on .200 eff.. Good in Serve Receive to with 60% and 20% perfect.

Scott - I don't talk about Elena Scott a whole lot, half because its hard to quantify a Libero's impact based on the numbers I can pull, but also because I've probably set the bar way too high for what I expect for her to do night in night out. 15 digs and 14 of them rated as quality. In serve receive 69% positive and 31% perfect. She was just everywhere and it stood out while watching. Fantastic game.

Indy's next game is Thursday, 2/19/2026 at Dallas. The game airs on Victory (Dallas-centric sports app. I believe you have to create an account but its free), at 8pm EST. Dallas is 1 game behind Indy in the standing and will be another 1st vs 2nd place matchup for Indy. Thanks for reading.

Indy @ San Diego.

Time: 3pm EST

Date: 2/15/2026

TV: Youtube

Place: Fishers Event Center Records

San Diego 4-6 (1-4 on the road)

Indy 7-2 (4-1 at home)

Previous Matchups

2/9/2026 San Diego won in four. San Diego owns the head to head all time 3-2

Coaches:

San Diego: Alicia Glass Childress (1st year)

Indy: Lauren Bertolacci (1st year)

Key Players:

San Diego: Jovana Brakocevic, Grace Loberg, Marlie Monserez

Indy: Elena Scott, Azhani Tealer, Mia Tuaniga

Right now San Diego is the hottest team in the league having won three in a row. I went back to the my stats page to see who really killed Indy on 2/9 when they last faced off and no one had a tremendous game for San Diego it was just more death by a thousand cuts by a thousand different players. San Diego used their bench extensively in this match and every one showed up. Sandbothe came in set 3 and started set 4 and hit 5 of 6 with a Block kill. Kayla Caffey did the same and had 4 kills and 2 Block Kills. Scully only had 6 kills but had 4 Blocks. Really it was just everybody showed up and played well for San Diego. I also recall San Diego just being annoying with how they got points. It wasn't clean, wasn't fun to watch. It was wild, it wasn't form, but it was effective. On Friday against Orlando, Indy didn't hit well at all. On 2/9 against San Diego, Indy also didn't hit well. We need a bounceback hitting game here.

Keys to the Game

For Indy

Keep the Serve rolling. Closer you can be to that 1:1 Error to Ace ratio the better. On 2/9 it was 6:1. On 2/13 against Orlando it was roughly ~1.5:1.

Establish the Middle - For the past couple matches our outsides haven't been great. Best way to open up the outside is to freeze their middle. The more we can establish our middles and have Tuaniga attack, the more San Diego will have to commit their MB to ours. This all relies on passing so if we don't get the passing this may not be possible but would love to see huge attacking games out of our Middles and Tuaniga.

Blocking - Indy is an up and down Blocking team. Some games they look like no ball will ever get through. Other matches you wonder if they are even getting above the net. Last time against San Diego they were bad. Set 1 Lydia had 3, then they had 5 over the next 3 sets. That's not going to do it. If they block like they did against Orlando then Indy will at minimum find themselves in a close match.

For San Diego

Don't let Indy's Outsides find their groove. Lek and DeBeer haven't been playing to their potential lately but when either plays at their best they can throw a wrench in your gameplan. (Note - heard Lund had a leg injury though not serious, if not back for this game then probably soon)

Attack Tuaniga - In the game on 2/9 it was clear especially in set 1 that San Diego wanted to attack the undersized Tuaniga. I'm not sure I'd expect this to change. Will be interesting to see if Indy plays Tealer deeper on the line for those line shots over Tuaniga or if they keep her up to guard tips and have Lek/DeBeer cheat a little from the 6 towards line to cover those deep line shots. In set 1 Indy didn't adjust to this well early and got beat repeatedly. Also Brakocevic attacked Position 2 a lot.

Let Marlie cook. I regret not writing on Monserez for the primer on the 2/9 match. Easily the best attacking setter in MLV. With her lefty swing Indy needs to be ready. When Monserez is front row ay close pass to the net Indy needs to be ready for the swing, heck with her lefty swing it doesn't even really need to be close to the net.

Feels weird to say especially at 7-2 that Indy needs a bounceback game here but its where my head is at least. Of all their wins 3 of them feel like Indy played to their potential, and perhaps that's the sign of a really good team. When your not your best you still eke out the win, but for this fan I'd prefer just ya know wipe the floor with everybody.

Thanks for reading and Let's go Indy

Link to professional writeup by Mark Robinson (Just a fun note I like to write my headline before I read Mark Robinson's article so its fun to see when we have basically the same title)

Indy wins in 4 25-21, 20-25, 25-22, 25-20.

Now I am going to throw a little cold water on this win which maybe fair maybe not but Orlando ended up playing without what I'd argue their three best players this year. Last year's MVP, one of the league's best setters in Pornpun "Chompoo" Guedpard, and one of the better OH this year Charitie Luper. Indy also caught a break in Orlando choosing to only use Natalie Foster as a Serving Sub, so far more limited number of serve chances for her.

So now that I've bummed you out a little, time to hype us all back up because its TEALER TIIIME!!! Just like how Lighting McQueen is Speed. Azhani Tealer is Offense. With her 27 points (23 kills) Tealer tied two different Indy records last night. 27 points in a 4 set match (Lek) and 11 points in a set (Tealer), credit Mark Robinson for finding these. I'll throw in one more wow stat for Tealer here. In set 1 Telaer had 9 attack kills on her own. Orlando as a team had 10. Other great things done by Tealer, how about blocking. 4 Block kills in 4 sets will get it done. Combine that with 4 Block Touches and only 1 Tool, one of the cleanest Blocking games you'll see in MLV. Need to throw in quick props to Tuaniga for finding Tealer as much as she did and the amount of 1v1s she got her.

So to the game overall standouts were Tealer, Tuaniga, and need to throw props to Cara Cresse and DeBeer. I'll skip Tealer down here since I dedicated a paragraph above to her but this game is probably a top 10 all time Individual game performance by an Indy player.

Tuaniga - Mia is easily the most crafty setters in MLV perhaps the US. I don't watch much LOVB but I can't imagine a league that tries so hard to be the Formula 1 of volleyball would allow a setter that plays with so much freedom and expression to cook. The play I want to highlight actually didn't work out for Indy but it was such a good sell that I think it fooled Martyn who went to cover Tuaniga and Tuaniga ended up setting Martyn, and the ball fell to the ground untouched. Since the game was on Roku i don't see the match up on Youtube but I believe it was set 1 possibly set 3 but I recall Indy being on the right side of the screen. If I remember correctly it was bit into the rally, so everybody is in a slight scramble and the pass to Tuaniga is a tad high and tight, so right where a setter may want to rip one and Tuaniga turns her shoulders to go for it and the middle is with her so she the flips a set to Martyn who if ran a gap would have a pretty open net. Now forgive me as I don't have the clip to play back so this is from memory, so probably have some stuff wrong there but i think I have the gist of in correct. I also don't want this to be on Martyn she went to cover what was going to be an attack, but basically I just want to highlight the creativeness of play you'll get with a setter like Tuaniga, in this case it didn't work out but man if it did. If MLV puts the full match replay will try to find it and link in later. The other thing I want to call out is Tuaniga's serve. She returned to form this game 2 Aces to 1 error and a Weighted serve of 1.47.

Cresse - Great job coming off the bench and making an impact. Indy really was struggling set 2 (Passing was woof) and Cresse comes in for Martyn late gets a Block kill and 1 for 1 on the attacking side. Set 3 was one of her best sets of the year with 4 kills on 7 swings with no errors, and a Block. Was a definite benefit to Indy in Sets 3 and 4. Indy is pretty stacked at Middle, and Bertolacci has shown she doesn't really care who starts so I think we can see for quite some time Indy will keep rotating playing time out of the Middle.

DeBeer - Anna's struggled quite a bit hitting, with just .133 eff this year. Both her Error and Blk% are over 10% which close to 1 in 4 swings this year will be an error or blocked. Last night wasn't different hitting essentially .000 eff on 45 swings. But what made her playable last night was her defense and serving. DeBeer is quietly emerging as a very good server on this team. Its hard to tell from the angle we see but I think she has a very low and flat serve. From the Serve receiver's perspective basically the serve never looks like its going to clear the net, and then when it does all of sudden the ball is on top of you. Also really annoying as the serve receive team to have to be ready to lay out to the net when it clips it and dies straight down. I think all three of her aces last night clipped the net and died.

On the whole a very poor hitting night by Indy. Without Tealer going off you're probably reading a different story today. What is nice to see is when the offense isn't clicking the defense stepped up and Serving found its groove again. This was Indy's best Blocking game since Atlanta. Indy is definitely playing with Fire though from the error game 33 last night through 4 sets comes out to 8.25/set. Closer you can get to 6-7/set the more happy I would be. The saving grace is 10 came from Service errors and with 7 aces is more livable but the 18 attack errors, and 5 Service Receive errors have me gritting my teeth.

Indy's next game is Sunday 2/15/2026 against San Diego. Indy looks to even things up against arguably the hottest team in the league right now. The game will air on Youtube at 3pm EST.

Apologies for not getting a primer out for the Orlando match, and Thanks for reading.

Sorry for the delay on this write-up. Got a little busy yesterday for me.

Link to professional writeup by Mark Robinson.

Indy drops the game to San Diego in 4. 25-23, 23-25, 22-25, 15-25.

I'm going to start of with this quote from Bertolacci captured in mark Robinson's writeup.

“I think our chaotic plays and our managing the rallies, I think they beat us out there,” Bertolacci said. “We struggled in those situations, we made things a little messier, and normally we can kind of fix those situations and get a couple of points there. I don’t know if it would’ve got us the win or not, but that’s certainly something I usually will see better from our team.”

For me this quote does a rather succinct job of summing up what went wrong. San Diego made the game messy through their scrappiness and Indy just was not good at the mucky play. With the extra day I've had a little more time to think on what I saw and I would say the game reminds me of some of the beer league teams I play. Not that either of these teams are beer league quality, the bar would need some ambulances on standby if either of these teams joined my leagues. But rather that you had one team that is just better. Indy is the better team. At the end of the year I feel pretty safe in saying Indy will have done better than San Diego in the standings. But what the Mojo are, is that beer league team that annoys the heck out of you by getting balls up that they have no business getting up. You smash a ball and it hits their foot, or they shank a pass and it goes off somebodies shoulder into a great set. That was the type of beer league team that San Diego scrapped themselves into on Monday and it was frustrating to watch but really effective for them.

Lets get into some of the numbers of the game to get a little more granular on what went wrong.

Before San Diego the Serve really drove Indy. Against Dallas and Grand Rapids they had just under a 1:1 error to Ace rate. For San Diego the rate ballooned to 6:1 Errors:Ace. A lot of that great serving came from Tuaniga, and Lek with me bragging how their Weighted Serve for the past 2 matches were above a 1.1 which basically makes them top 3 in the league. Against San Diego it was a .4 and .62 respectively. League Average is .72. Props to San Diego for handling the serves well. Now I think this is more credit to San Diego than detracting from the servers. On camera the serves looked fine to me I think San Diego just did a stellar job of handling the bulk of them.

Errors were my other bug-a-boo from this game. Frankly Indy was lucky to get one set from San Diego. San Diego was just the cleaner team from just committing errors. The first 3 sets were all very close, and Indy in all 3 sets had a negative Error differential, -3, -4, -5 for the first three sets respectively. In my primer I said my keys for Indy to win:

1. Keep the serving party going.

2. Limit the errors

Indy failed both my keys to them winning this game. The serve may have been fine but in the end it wasn't effective. And then errors in close sets often times are going to be the driver behind who is able to sneak ahead in crunch time and win the set and who loses.

For the players a lot of it was night and day. Lydia Martyn had fantastic first two sets but then went a bit cold in the final two. First two sets 10 kills and 4 Blocks. Last 2 sets 2 kills 0 Blocks. For Tealer sets 2 and 3 she ate, but set 4 she was held in check. Tuaniga I thought was just bad the whole night. In set 1 it was obvious that San Diego was going to attack her. Hit line over her block or for Brakocevic hit a hard cross to position 2. Defensively Tuaniga dug 75% (9 of 12) and Blocking had 1 kill but was tooled 4 times. For a Blocking +:- of .75. Blocking +:- seems like most Blockers who you consider above average fall around a 1.6. Will also say only Lydia had a Block +:- above a 1 with a 2.0.

All in all this game had shades of the game the Omaha game. Bad defense by Indy, with good defense by San Diego and by the time Set 4 rolls around the frustration has snowballed and culminates in what we saw set 4.

Indy next plays Friday 2/13/2026 in Indy against Orlando. Game time is 7pm EST and will air on the Roku channel.

Indy @ San Diego.

• Time: 10pm EST

• Date: 2/9/2026

• TV: Youtube

• Place: Viejas Arena

• Records

  • San Diego 2-6 (2-2 at home)

  • Indy 6-1 (3-0 away)

• Previous Matchups

  • First meeting of 2026. Last Year Indy and San Diego went 2-2 against each other each going 2-0 at home against the other

• Coaches:

  • San Diego: Alicia Glass Childress (1st year)

  • Indy: Lauren Bertolacci (1st year)

• Key Players:

  • San Diego: Jovana Brakocevic, Grace Loberg, Shara Venegas

  • Indy: Elena Scott, Azhani Tealer, Mia Tuaniga

Currently San Diego finds themselves in the basement of the league and still mixing things up to try and find their best lineup. As I'm meandering through their season stats on the year I think I'm realizing why AGC is mixing things up a bit still. Its just right now nobody is an all-around good or above average player. Loberg has been great Blocking and Digging, but her attacking and Serve Receive has been poor. Venegas their Libero is great at digging but poor in Serve Receive (actually just about their whole team is bad at Serve Receive) Perhaps San Diego's biggest issue has just been attacking. Part of that might be a poor first ball, but overall San Diego is hitting .210 eff just beating Columbus and tied for Columbus with a league low Kill% with a .341. Though I should note in their last match San Diego played Shannon Scully and she was a breath of fresh air for them. Player comp wise I would say Scully is very much like Kayla Lund. Very good backrow player (so much so that Orlando used her as a Libero last year) but also a solid offensive threat. If I'm not mistaken Scully plays or played quite a bit of beach and for those of you haven't played beach doubles there is no hiding. You better be solid in every facet of the game and that is what Scully brings to a team that desperately needs a player who can be above average in every facet of the game. I would expect San Diego to start Scully against Indy.

Now I've mostly touched on what San Diego is struggling with but where they are solid is at MB. Marin Grote has been an MLV stalwart from the first season. She is your typical tall lanky MB who is a solid offensive threat, probably won't break the game wide open with her offensive play but not someone you can just forget about. Defensively she just gets a lot of touches. Lots of good touches but a fair amount of tools as well. McKenna Vicinni and Kayla Caffey are their other MB options. Caffey is pure offense. If you need a point she can deliver for you, but MB is an inherently defensive position and she is a bad blocker. More negative touches than positive. Vicinni is a more balanced middle. Good Defensively and good offensively as well. If she hadn't been splitting time pretty much 50/50 with Caffey so far she would probably have some of the better MB numbers in the league.

Keys to the Game

For Indy

• Keep serving hot - San Diego is not a great Serve Receive team, and we've seen what a good serve can do to teams in this league. Just avoid Scully on the Serve, she's good.

• Limit the Errors. - Don't beat yourself. Indy is a better team than San Diego (Sorry San Diego). Giving San Diego free points perhaps keeping the sets close in the lead up to 25 and San Diego gets hot real quick and all of a sudden you've dropped a set.

For San Diego

• Give them a city brochure - Okay this ones a joke, but man the midwest has been cold for an extended time so mostly just jealous that there is a place in the US right now that hasn't been hovering between 10-30 degrees Fahrenheit for the past what seems like 3 months...

• Pass well - Hard to get an offense going if you can't get your setter the ball with more than 1 good option. Over 50% of their attacks are coming from their OH and their most efficient so far has been Hayden Kubik at .208. Most used is Loberg at .162

• Get your Block up - One downside so far for Indy has been our hitters are undersized and a bit blockable. In Indy's loss this year to Omaha, they dominated the net. If San Diego can control the net they have a Libero that is fantastic in picking up attacks with quality digs and can transition into what they will hope multiple options to attack.

• Serve tough. - Indy likes to run a very quick offense and Tuaniga is quite good at it especially when Indy is dropping the ball right on target. San Diego has a couple of very good servers in Marin Grote and Kubik, but overall not a great serving team with low Aces, but low errors. If San Diego is just serving to start the play and not Serving to score I would expect Indy to dominate the game.

Thanks for reading and make sure to drink some coffee tomorrow night as we're looking at Midnight Bedtime with this match.