Jacksonville, AL – Senior libero Ginny Gerig Busse became the first Austin Peay State University (APSU) volleyball athlete to earn the Ohio Valley Conference’s Defensive Player of the Year award, receiving the honor at Wednesday’s awards banquet before the start of the OVC Volleyball Championship tournament.
Gerig Busse also was a First-Team All-OVC selection and is the second Governors libero to earn that distinction, joining Paige Economos (2011).
Joining her on the All-OVC teams was junior outside hitter Brooke Moore, who earned her second career Second-Team All-OVC recognition.
It was a career-best season for Gerig Busse, a Towanda, Illinois native, as she recorded 558 digs during the regular season, averaging 4.94 digs per set. It was the first 500-dig campaign of her career and one of only 14 in program history. She ranked second among OVC players in both total digs and digs per set and was 21st among Division I players in total digs.
However, Gerig Busse did her best work in OVC play, dominating the league with 358 digs and an impressive 5.59 digs per set. She had 40 more digs than any other libero in the league and held a 0.39 digs-per-set advantage.
Gerig Busse enters the OVC Volleyball Championship needing just six digs to become the second player in program history to record 2,000 career digs. Her First-Team All-OVC selection is he 24th all-time for the Governors.
Moore earns Second-Team All-OVC honors, adding to her 2017 award. The Louisville, Kentucky product brings a career-best 3.21 kills per set into the OVC tournament while also setting her single-season career-best in digs per set (3.09).
Moore became the 17th APSU Govs player to record 20 kills and 20 digs in the same match, posting 29 kills and 22 digs – both career bests – against Missouri State, September 21st. She also became the ninth Govs player to record both 1,000 kills and 1,000 digs in their career, reaching both milestones in early November.
Austin Peay State University finished tied for fifth in the 2019 OVC volleyball regular-season race with a 9-7 league mark. The fifth-seeded APSU Governors open their OVC Volleyball Championship tournament run with a 3:30pm Thursday contest against fourth-seeded Southeast Missouri in a match broadcast on the ESPN+ digital streaming service.
