By Erica Quinones
Editor-in-Chief
Washington College’s volleyball team faced their first games of the season in a mini tournament at DeSales University, hosted on Sept. 3 and 4.
Originally meant to open the season with a home game against Alvernia University on Sept. 1, the match was postponed due to extreme weather conditions as the Eastern Shore was hit by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
Instead, the Shorewomen hit the road, traveling to DeSales University’s invitational in Center Valley, Pa. for a string of three games, all of which ended in the Shorewomen’s defeat.
“I think that as a team, overall we grew a lot from this weekend and we learned a lot about ourselves as a team and as individual players,” junior Courtney Maxwell said after the tournament. “We were able to see where our faults are and where our strong points are…and we were also able to see how well the team gels together as players, which is something that you can’t teach.”
The first game of the weekend occurred on Sept. 3 as the Shorewomen faced off against The New York University’s Violets.
Shorewomen lost their opening match, the Violets winning three straight sets with scores of 25–15, 25–13, and 25–23.
In the opening set, the Shorewomen suffered six service errors, but sophomore Sylvia Johnson posted a team-high with three kills in the opening frame.
Entering the second set, sophomore Jordan Fairchild matched the Violets with a 5–5 service ace, but the Violets took the next four points.
Maxwell registered three of her seven kills in the set.
The Shorewomen fell behind by a score of 17–11 in the closing set, but continued to chip away at the lead.
Senior Jensyn Hartzell capped the Violets’
9–5 run with a kill from a setter dump, bringing the set to 22–20. The Violets took the next two points for their first match point, but a hitting error and a kill by Maxwell shrank the gap to 24–23.
The Violets won the match on the next play.
Leading the Shorewomen was Maxwell with seven kills, sophomore Riley McHugh who added two block assists, and Hartzell who contributed seven digs.
The next match of the weekend saw the Shorewomen facing off with DeSales’ Bulldogs on Sept. 4.
The Shorewomen were defeated in three sets again against the Bulldogs in the morning as the Bulldogs won with scores of 25–12, 25–15, and 25–18.
In the second match, Schaber showed out with six points on six kills while Maxwell contributed another four kills as well as seven digs. The team lead on digs was claimed by sophomore Kellen Ruf who had nine digs in the match.
The final match of the invitational was fought hard in a four-set match against Rutgers-Camden’s Scarlet Raptors in the afternoon.
The Scarlet Raptors took the first two sets with scores of 25–23 and 25–13. The Shorewomen pushed back in the third set, taking a 22–25 win before losing the fourth set 29–27.
While the Shorewormen had four set points in the final frame against the Scarlet Raptors, they were unable to force a fifth set in the match.
In their third match, senior Jenna Daunoras set a team high of 15.5 points while senior Lauren Zedlar registered her own team high of 21 assists. Ruf also had an impressive showing, contributing a team high of 14 digs.
“We talked a lot about seeing flashes of greatness on our team, and I feel like overall through the weekend, we saw a lot of flashes of greatness,” Maxwell said.
Elm Archive Photo