ALLY SEEVERS/THE CREIGHTONIAN

Junior Trinity Shadd-Ceres delivers her career-high 29th kill of the match to clinch the fifth set, 15-12, and secure the 3-2 victory over Arizona.

The Bluejay Invitational gave No. 15 Creighton volleyball three chances to test itself—and three very different ways to be tested. Across three matches, Creighton found momentum, lost it, adjusted and fought its way back, finishing the weekend 2-1 with a better sense of what it does well and where it still needs to grow. 

In the first match of the weekend, with former Bluejay Destiny Ndam-Simpson across the net, Creighton’s serve sent Arizona out of system, the Wildcats scrambled to keep the ball alive, and a Bluejay block finished the rally. The D.J. Sokol Arena crowd reacted immediately. A few points later, the-then No. 10 Bluejays had another block, then an ace and another to force Arizona to call a timeout. 

For a few rotations, Creighton looked like the team it wanted to be when the Bluejay Invitational began. Then, the first set got complicated. 

Creighton led 21-12, then watched Arizona erase the advantage. At 24-24, a misplayed first contact left the Bluejays scrambling near the net again. Trinity Shadd-Ceres, a junior outside hitter, answered with a kill, and Arizona gave Creighton the set with an attack error. 

The Bluejays eventually won the match 3-2, but the five-set match showed how much work remained. Creighton played some of its best volleyball in stretches, then gave Arizona openings through missed connections and defensive confusion. 

Shadd-Ceres kept the Bluejays in the match when they needed points. She finished with a career-high 29 kills and hit .420, including 17 kills over the final two sets. Her offense became more effective as she adjusted to Arizona’s block and worked farther across the court and higher over the hands.  

“Getting more into the cross and hitting higher and deeper is something I’m working on right now,” Shadd-Ceres said. 

Creighton also changed its shape. After dropping the second and third sets, head coach Brian Rosen moved the Bluejays from their 6-2 formation to a 5-1, giving senior fifth-year setter Katie Dalton more control of the offense. 

“A 5-1 allows our outsides to move more, too,” Rosen said. “It spread our offense a little more and forced their middles to hold.” 

The change gave Creighton a different look at the net. Senior opposite Jaya Johnson became a bigger part of the attack, and junior middle blocker Ayden Ames continued to pressure Arizona with quick swings and blocks. In the fourth set, Creighton hit .769, the third-best set percentage in program history, while Shadd-Ceres put down 11 kills on 12 swings. 

The set also had the feel of a team settling into the match. The score was tied 15-15 when Creighton began to pull away. Shadd-Ceres hammered a ball into the Arizona block at 19-17, sending it into the right-side concourse and bringing the crowd to its feet. 

“We just got lit, I mean, we were turnt up,” Dalton said afterward. “We thought,‘Let’s go, foot on the gas,’ hyping each other up.” 

Creighton carried that energy into the fifth set. The Bluejays started 4-0 and never trailed. Arizona eventually cut the deficit to 12-11, but Shadd-Ceres ended the match with her 29th kill. Creighton had six blocks in the final two sets and finished with 77 digs and 72 kills. 

Shadd-Ceres did not frame the performance around her own numbers. 

“Just playing for my team — that’s the reason I play volleyball,” she said. “I trust everyone I’m playing for, and I just do my job for them.” 

On Saturday, the Jays faced a different challenge early. Pepperdine started quickly and forced Creighton to spend most of the first set chasing. Rosen called timeout with his team trailing 12-8 and asked for a stronger defensive mentality. Creighton still needed time to settle in, and the Bluejays finally tied the set at 18-18 after a sequence of blocks and a Shadd-Ceres kill. 

That pattern continued through the afternoon. Creighton repeatedly absorbed an early run, adjusted and found another way to score. 

Sophomore outside hitter Abbey Hayes became a major part of that process. She finished with 11 kills and eight digs, and she described one of the adjustments the team had been emphasizing all week. 

“All week we’ve been working on pass-to-attack, because that’s something we struggled with at the beginning of the season,” Hayes said. “Katie’s just been great. We all give her feedback, and she adjusts so quickly.” 

Senior libero Saige Damrow also became more vocal as the match moved along. At one point in the second set, she spoke to the team during the huddle. 

“No matter what, if I’m playing good or bad, I have to bring the energy and lift up my teammates around me,” Damrow said. 

Creighton lost that second set 25-17, then controlled the final two. Hayes opened the third with two kills. Shadd-Ceres added a solo block. Johnson found points against Pepperdine’s left-side block, and senior middle blocker Eloise Brandewie finished with nine kills and a match-high four blocks. 

Creighton won 25-18 and 25-16, collecting 10 aces, 58 digs and seven blocks. Damrow had a season-high five aces, and Dalton posted 42 assists and 14 digs. The win gave Creighton its 300th home victory since the volleyball program returned in 1994. 

Then came Tulsa. The Golden Hurricane had not played the Bluejays the previous season, but Creighton had watched them push Kansas earlier in the fall. Rosen said before Sunday’s match that he thought Tulsa was the best team in the tournament. 

They eventually proved him right. 

Creighton won the first set 26-24 after Tulsa erased four set points, and the Bluejays later forced a fifth by taking the fourth 25-22. Sophomore right side Ashlyn Paymal helped during a seven-point run in the fourth, which turned a 16-16 tie into a 20-16 lead. 

Creighton’s blocking continued to improve through the weekend. Senior middle blocker Eloise Brandewie finished with a career-high 12 blocks, and Creighton recorded 18 as a team. 

“In practice, we worked a lot on communicating with pins, talking about tempo, staying low and over,” Brandewie said. “It got better every single day, so it made my job a lot easier.” 

Creighton could control stretches with its blocking, but momentum stalled as it gave Tulsa easy points. The Bluejays committed seven service errors in the first set and tallied 11 attack errors in the second. 

“It was just one of those nights where the serves didn’t click,” he said. “They weren’t even good errors, they were kind of wild at times.” 

Tulsa took the fifth set 15-10 after jumping ahead 7-1 and 10-2. That ended Creighton’s 14-match home winning streak and left the Bluejays 4-2 heading into the next weekend. 

“We’re all competitive,” Hayes said after Sunday’s loss. “I know that fired us up. It just makes me want to go practice right now.” 

The tournament gave Rosen the chance to see his team against three distinctly different opponents and three matches that reached a deciding set or came close to it. It also gave the Bluejays a clearer picture of where their progress still depended on repetition. 

“We’re still fighting really hard for consistency, and we’re just not there yet,” Rosen said. 

The Bluejays play next at the Rice Invitational in Houston. Their first match is against the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) this afternoon at 3 p.m. All this weekend’s matches can be streamed on ESPN+.