By Pat Mariboe
Senior Sports Writer
After a successful outing in the DeSales Invitational, in which the Shorewomen finished the tournament with a 3-1 record, the team traveled to Reading, Pa. to take on Alvernia University and Immaculata University.
“We went 3-1 at the tournament this year, which is a pretty good start to our season,” said junior Amy Rohn. “The tournament was a good chance for us to finally showcase all the hard work we’ve been doing in practice, and it also helped us work out some adjustments with new lineups.”
Washington College were up against hosts Alvernia in the first match of the day. The Crusaders jumped out to an early lead against the Shorewomen, winning the first set 25-20. The Shorewomen bounced back, however, winning the next three sets in close contests, 25-19, 25-23, and 25-18. Junior Alaina Geissberger, who was named to the DeSales Invitational All-Tournament Team, and sophomore Kaitlyn Marino came up big in the match against Alvernia to put them at 1-0 on the day. Marino had a career high of 20 kills while Geissberger added in a career high of eight blocks of her own.
In their second match against Immaculata, The Shorewomen started off with a full head of steam, winning the first set 25-11. The Shorewomen would then go on to dominate the final two sets 25-11 and 25-16 to finish the day 2-0. Junior Taylor Horan was a standout for the Shorewomen in this match, as she recorded 29 assists to help the team win comfortably against Immaculata.
Senior Audrey Utchen, who had a team high 20 digs was excited about her team’s performance and looks forward for things to come.
“Our games today really showed how resilient our team is,”she said. “We started off slow and lost the first set of our first match, but refocused and cleaned our game up and were able to win against both Alvernia and Immaculata. Today showed that when we play clean and play with energy, we can dominate the opponent. Looking forward, things are starting to mesh and I’m excited to see how we continue to improve. This season we have a different line up, as we only have one middle, so adjusting to new rotations has been a learning process, but we are starting to learn what does and doesn’t work in each rotation and our game is starting to come together quite nicely.”
The Shorewomen have two upcoming games in close proximity to each other, as they take on Marymount University on Sept. 14 and Bryn Mawr on Sept. 17.
“I’m anticipating a fun and dominating match on Saturday when we open conference play against Bryn Mawr, and expect us to continue improving with each play,” Utchen said. “If we can come out fast and play at our speed, we should be a force to be reckoned with, and that can be showcased on Saturday.”