RIO DE JANEIRO -- Pepperdine alum Kim Hill earned a measure of history when she and the United States women's volleyball team captured a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics on Saturday.

Pepperdine's all-time medal count now stands at 19 (Pepperdine Olympic history). Hill's medal is just the third ever by a female Pepperdine alum, and the first since 1984.

Hill started all eight matches for the USA and averaged 11.9 points per contest. She had a team-high 19 points in the bronze medal match against the Netherlands, and scored the match-ending point on a service ace. She also had a team-high 15 points in a quarterfinal victory over Japan.

"We started (the match) trying to be ourselves and be `our good,'" Hill said in a USA Volleyball press release after the 3-1 bronze-medal win over the Netherlands. "More fire comes throughout the match when it becomes more of a battle. I think we were OK. We were down a lot. The second set was a little bit of a heartbreaker to lose that. We were down a bit in the third, obviously. We have this fighter attitude that no one can get us down. I was so proud of how we battled back. Just one point at a time; that's what we kept saying, `just one point at a time.'"

Hill wasn't the only Pepperdine connection on the USA squad. Men's volleyball head coach Marv Dunphy was working his seventh Olympics as a scouting coach, men's volleyball assistant coach David Hunt was an assistant and men's volleyball volunteer assistant Kayla Banwarth was the starting libero.

Hill (Portland, Ore.) has been a mainstay with the squad the past couple of years, and this was her first Olympics.

She earned the Most Valuable Player award at the 2014 FIVB World Championships as the team won a gold medal. At the recently concluded FIVB World Grand Prix, where the U.S. won the silver medal, she was named the tournament's Second-Best Outside Spiker.

The 6-foot-4 outside hitter played club volleyball in Turkey in 2015-16, and was named MVP of the Turkish League after leading VakifBank to the title.

Hill was one of the top indoor players in Pepperdine history between 2008-11 and also was a standout on the beach. In fact, she's the first and only person to earn AVCA All-American first team honors in both sports in the same school year (2011-12).

With the Waves' indoor team, Hill was a three-time All-American, earning honorable mention status in both 2009 and 2010, and she was the West Coast Conference Player of the Year in 2011. She finished with 1,300 kills, good for sixth all-time at Pepperdine.

On the beach, she was a member of the Waves' inaugural team, which won the 2012 AVCA national championship. She repeated as an All-American during her second and final season in 2013.