Season Ends in NCAA Regional Semi-finals

 

After a first round game that saw most people get into the game, we faced a very tough second round opponent in the host school, Johns Hopkins.  Against Manhattanville, Lauren led the way with 8 kills, followed by a trio of players with 6 (Kaite, Ava, Molly), and then Lexi and Steph had 5 and 3 kills respectively.  We led in every statistical category and had a somewhat dominant performance.  It was a great match, and a good start to our weekend!  (It was also my 500th win, which as coaches, we know just means I've been around a long time, but nice to get that milestone with this group in that setting!)  Another bonus of the weekend location was that Jack was close enough from home to come and help us out!  Always great to have Coach Jack back on the bench!!

The Hopkins match was a very tight match, and I felt like we played them very tough, pushing it out to four sets, but we couldn't quite force the 5th set.  We lost a tough first set in extra points 24-26, and won the second set, but couldn't come up with the points to push the score to even in the third and fourth sets.  Overall, we felt good about our performance.  They had one OH that we just couldn't contain who went off for 26 kills, but other than that one player, I think we more than held our own.  Ava led the way with 13 kills, followed by Katie with 11 and Molly with 10.  Lexi had a match high 5 blocks, followed closely by Molly with 4 and Ava with 3.  Kelly also had a match high 28 dig performance, landing her a spot on the NCAA Regional All-Tournament Team!

It's always hard to say goodbye to seniors, and this class really came together and propelled the team to a great season despite some injuries and tough losses.  We will certainly miss them all, but we also have a good core of returning players and a new group of freshmen coming in that we're excited about to continue our growth!