Tough Road Stretch

Our first setback of the season came in a thriller at Wesleyan where we lost in the 5th set to a very good Wesleyan Team.  The next day we bounced back by sweeping Conn College, who took a game from Amherst the night before.  We dominated Conn in the middle especially as our kills leaders were Maggie (12), Corley (11) and Lucy (5).  additionally, we aced them 9 times to their 3 aces where Jane, Lucy and Britt all had 2 aces each.  Conn College Video Link

At this point in the season we started to really take note of our physical state and tried to schedule some recovery workouts to help us stay healthy and fit.  Our new trainer, Hannah, led us through a pool workout followed by yoga with our resident yogi guru, Prem Prakash on Monday instead of practicing--we thank them both for keeping us healthy this season!

The following weekend, we dropped a pair of key NESCAC matches to Bowdoin and Tufts.  We lead most of the first set against Bowdoin only to see them pull away at the end and take the first set by 4 points.  We lost each set 21-25, and they were all competitive until the last set where we had to claw back to make it look respectable.  The following day we played at Tufts, who we knew would be a different and more challenging match than Bowdoin, whom we match up with very well.  Tufts runs a faster offense than anyone else in conference, and they just pose a different challenge all around, and we were motivated to rebound after our performance the night before.  We started strong and Tufts made a ton of hitting errors and we took the first set 25-20 despite the fact that we missed 6 serves in the first set alone!  They bounced back and won the next two sets, but then the 4th set was very competitive again, and we made a late surge and forced extra points, but in the end lost 24-26 in the 4th.  Although disappointing, at least we felt we played with more energy and focus than the night before, and I think we learned a lot, as you tend to do more often with losses than with wins, unfortunately!   

Bowdoin Highlight Video Link

Tufts Highlight Video Link

New Program Record Set by Starting 14-0

We opened Conference play at home against Colby and Bates with two wins!  We actually dominated both teams allowing a maximum of 19 points in any given set in the two match sweep.  We combined tough serving along with high hitting percentages for the wins.  Against Colby, we hit .293 with 6 aces (5 all from Jane!), and against Bates the next day we hit .340 with 10 aces. Gabbie ended the weekend with almost 10 assists/set, which is fantastic!  Maggie and Corley led us offensively along with Katie and Laney.  It's so great to play at home and we continued to get big crowds in Pepin for our matches, which is such a fun atmosphere.  We have the perfect scenario, I think, since we have a strong veteran Team and everyone is desperate to watch live sports again!

The following weekend we continued our Home stretch with another Conference match against a tough Amherst team followed by Brandeis, who plays in the perennial power conference UAA.  Our Amherst match-up was a repeat of last years Quarterfinal match where we emerged victorious in the 5th set, and this match was a prefect repeat of that--including the 5th set win by 2 points!  It was a very tight, back and forth match, just like last year.  We won the 1st, 3rd, and 5th sets, and all were tightly contested.  Here's a great sniped of match point!

 

 Brandeis didn't pose as much of a threat as Amherst as we held them to a dismal .010 hitting % and swept them 3-0 with scores of 25-14, 25-15, 25-13.

The last week in September saw us play Skidmore away, and then we hosted Trinity on Oct. 1, and a double header of Endicott and Clarkson on Saturday the 2nd.  Against Skidmore, we continued our efficient hitting percentage hitting .324 for the match.  Our top kill leaders remained the same with Maggie (11), Corley (9), and Jane (8) leading the way again.  Gabbie continued to lead our offense and Kelly (18 digs) anchored our defense, along with Jane and Lucy (3 blocks each) and Corley (2 blocks.)

Our final weekend of our THREE week home stand saw us play Trinity on Friday night, followed by both Endicott and Clarkson on Saturday, both of whom have been NCAA teams the last couple of years.  Trinity was an up and down match with us winning easily in the 1st and 3rd sets, but struggling to pull out a 28-26 win in the 2nd set!  Neither team hit particularly well with them hitting .009 and us only hitting .173.  We did come up with twice as many blocks and more than twice as many aces, which was great.  Lucy and Gabbie both had 5 blocks and Corley had 3 while Britt led us in aces (3) with Kelly right behind with 2.

Saturday was a tough day having to play two strong teams in the same day, unlike our previous multi-match days in the opening weekend featuring teams that were not as challenging.  We lost our first set to Endicott 21-25 before dominating the rest of the match by scores of 11, 16, and 15.  They had a lot of fire power, but our defense held them to a .113 hitting % while we countered by hitting .283.  A key for us was our serving--Katie led with 5, Kelly with 3 and Britt with 2 while we tallied 12 total aces for the match!  Corley led us in kills (13) and blocks (5), while Maggie had 12K, 2B and Laney had 7K, 3B.  Gabbie had match high assists with 32 and Kelly led all players with 14 digs.

Clicke here for the Endicott Highlight VIDEO

The second match of that day saw us again lose the first set to Clarkson 24-26, and then we really had to grind out the win in the next three sets.  We could never quite pull away and they just kept tipping us to death and they were very good at it.  The stats were odd...they tallied more kills, aces, assists and digs than we did, but we out-blocked them 10-3.  They were both very good teams, so to come away from the weekend with three wins, we felt very good about that.  The wins also set a program record 14 straight wins, which is fun!

Click here for the Clarkson Highlight VIDEO