Tippecanoe Valley senior Alli Miller signed with Manchester University to continue her volleyball career. (Photo by Mike Deak)

AKRON – Tippecanoe Valley celebrated two more of its senior class latching on with colleges to continue their athletic careers. Both Alli Miller and Emma Craig signed National Letters of Intent on Wednesday in the Viking Room at TVHS.

ALLI MILLER, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY VOLLEYBALL

Miller signed with Manchester University after a stellar year with Valley volleyball. The senior got her chance after sitting behind a huge senior class as a junior. In 2019, Miller had 66 aces (a 97.4 serve percentage), 160 digs and had 265 serve receptions, taking 8.3 serves per match.

For her career, Miller racked up 369 digs, 127 aces and 604 serve receptions.

The diminuative but feisty defensive star played for coach Mallory Eaton, who retired at the conclusion of last season.

“I think she has always been a perfect culture kid,” Eaton said. “You never had to worry if Alli was going to be on time. And you knew she would come in and do her best. First kid in, last kid out mentality. When you hit your senior year you feel like you can finally step up, and she took her senior year by the reigns and ran with it.”

Miller looks to major in elementary education and minor in special education at Manchester. Miller also is the third from this senior class to sign on for volleyball, joining Makenzie Woodcox (Grace) and Thursday’s signee, Amy Baca, with Goshen College.

“It’s neat all of the hard work we did in the offseason and all of the work we put in behind that big senior class, really makes it worth it,” Miller said. “I feel like we were so close right off the bat coming into last season. We might have been younger than some teams, but we were all really tight as friends. We spent so much time together, from working out to slumber parties. It was just there from the start, it wasn’t something we had to work on as the season went. Likely why we have three girls playing volleyball in college.”

Ivan Matos just finished his second season as head coach at Manchester. The Spartan roster has a host of regional names, including Emily Bailey of Warsaw and Grace Ondrla of Wawasee.

EMMA CRAIG, EARLHAM COLLEGE BASKETBALL

Craig wasn’t the megastar of her team, or really any of her basketball teams through the years at Valley. But one thing Craig was, she was consistent. And that willingness to do the little things earned Craig a shot with Earnham College.

“She is one of those glue players, and did a lot of things really well for us,” said Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball head coach Chris Kindig, who was on hand to see his 10th basketball player sign on for college in his 10 years as head coach. “She had to play a lot of different positions and roles, and she did a tremendous job. She was obviously one of our team leaders in steals and rebounding. Her role was just to be that overall glue player who can play all those positions. To be successful you need players like that. We put a lot of value on players like that in this program. They are the one who get to pursue playing basketball at the next level because of that.”

Craig was a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none type for the Lady Vikings this past season, but did stuff the stat sheet. Craig averaged 6.3 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.7 assists and 2.5 steals per game her senior year as well as hitting 35 percent of her field goals. She had nearly as many offensive rebounds (32) as she did defensive rebounds (40).

For her career, Craig scored 321 points in her career, and notched 161 rebounds, 127 steals and 124 assists.

Earlham is coached by Shauna Watson, and has some local flavor on the roster in Neely Trenshaw from NorthWood and Halle Shipp of Warsaw.

Tippecanoe Valley senior Emma Craig signed with Earlham College to continue her basketball career. (Photo provided)