Last Saturday, for every Penn State (16-4, 9-3) kill, the Wisconsin Badgers (16-3, 10-1) replied with kills by Sherisa Livingston. The 2000 first team All-American was the pinnacle of the Badger's offense, and in the first game it showed.
The 6-foot-2 senior middle blocker from Simi Valley, Calif. is the Badger's career kills leader with 1,680 and with nine games left in the regular season, she is going where no Badger has ever been before. This season she leads the No. 5 Badgers with an average of 5.03 kills per game (13th in the nation), while hitting a .401 percentage (16th in the nation).
One of the three starters that returned from the Badgers team which went to the NCAA Women's Volleyball championship last year. It seems her ambition this season is to lead this team back to the championship and win it this time. Evidence of this is that Wisconsin is off to its best Big Ten start ever, with a 10-1 mark.
"She is probably one of the best middle blockers in the country and when she gets her swings going, it is very hard to stop her," says Penn State's Cara Smith, who played with Livingston in last year's USA Women's Junior's Volleyball team. "She is intense, very competitive and always strives to be the best."
Another sign of her dominance is that before the match against the Lions, out of the 19 matches the Badgers had played, she led the team in kills 13 times.
"I think she is an excellent player and she is going to get her kills no matter what," said Lion Katie Schumacher.
In the 3-2 loss to the Lions, she got off to a good start with five kills in the first game, while hitting a very accurate .714 from the field. Her ability to leap and smash the ball down with lightning speed left the Lions in a daze for the first two games, while Wisconsin raced to two victories. It seemed that when she was on the court, the Badgers were on a run and the Lions couldn't do anything about it.
Despite a performance with a match-high 21 kills and .302 hitting percentage, Livingston felt she wasn't up to par.
"I didn't feel great and it was evident out there," Livingston said.
Last week, she was the Big Ten Player of the Week, with wins over No. 21 Minnesota and Iowa. She had a match-high 15 kills to go with her five blocks against the Golden Gophers.
"Livingston is an enormous blocker and she is probably one of the best five players in the country," said Lions Coach Russ Rose.
With their next game at Illinois, anyone can be certain that wherever she goes, the opposition's main gameplan will be how to stop the towering and powerful Sherisa Livingston.
