Ignite Outlast Fury for Five-Set Victory
Indy Secures Important Home Win Before Three-Match Road Trip Begins
By: Mark Robinson
FISHERS, Ind. (March 20, 2025) – It took longer than perhaps anticipated, but the Indy Ignite came away with an important five-set victory in tonight’s Pro Volleyball Federation match against the visiting Columbus Fury. The triumph moved the Ignite to 10-8 on the season and into a tie with Atlanta for third place in the PVF standings.
After rolling to 25-21 and 25-16 wins in the opening sets, Indy appeared poised for a sweep. But Columbus battled back to capture the next two hard-fought sets that both went to extra points – 28-26 and 26-24, the Fury surviving three Indy match points in the third set – to force a deciding fifth set.
Columbus rattled off four consecutive points to take a 9-7 lead in the final set before Indy rallied to take the lead for good at 12-11 on an Azhani Tealer block. Anna DeBeer’s kill through a triple block attempt put the Ignite up 14-12, and while the Fury dodged one set point, the match ended with a Columbus service error and 15-13 Ignite set/match victory.
The PVF Player of the Week for her record-setting performance last week, Tealer led an extremely balanced Ignite attack with 17 kills and three blocks for 20 points. She believed a lack of aggressive Ignite serving allowed the Fury to claw back and win the third and fourth sets.
“I think we kind of got lax in our serving in those middle two sets,” Tealer said. “They started passing a little better and any team in this league, when they’re passing perfect, they’re going to be hard to defend. We picked that up a lot in the fifth set. Also, they’re a really physical team. They’re pretty big and they started getting some blocks and touches on us, so we started swinging a little bit higher and that worked well for us.”
Middle blockers Lydia Martyn and Caroline “CC” Crawford both posted extraordinary nights, scoring 17 points apiece. Martyn tied her season high with 16 kills, had a block and increased her PVF-leading kill percentage with a 66.7% success rate tonight to go along with a 58.3% kill efficiency. Crawford was just as lethal, tying her season best of 12 kills to go with four blocks and a service ace, with no attack errors and a sensational kill percentage and kill efficiency (both 70.6%).
“When we get pin dependent,” Martyn said of her outside hitters, “it’s a lot on them to take the load but also (opposing) blockers start scheming you. Then our pins get double blocks so if you can just put a threat in the middle of the court, it opens a lot for other hitters on our team.