W. Volleyball Topples Dartmouth, Again

The Harvard women’s volleyball team once again pounced on Ivy foe Dartmouth and split its remaining two games in a strong second-place performance at this weekend’s Crimson Classic.

Harvard beat both Dartmouth and Northeastern, 3-1, before losing to Winthrop, 3-2, at the Malkin Athletic Center.

Winthrop 3, W. Volleyball 2

Harvard (6-7. 2-0 Ivy) faced its toughest competition on Saturday night against a powerful Winthrop (15-6) squad, which finished second in its conference last season.

Harvard won game one in impressive fassion, as sophomore Kaego Ogbechie spiked home the final shot for a 30-24 victory. Ogbechie was a force for the Crimson all weekend, finishing the Winthrop match with 17 kills and six blocks. Junior Nathalie Miller turned in a strong offensive performance with a team-leading 18 kills.

Following game one, the match became a see-saw battle. Winthrop took games two and four by scores of 31-29 and 30-28, while Harvard won game three, 30-21 to set up a tie-breaking game five.

Winthrop dominated game five, winning 15-6. Hitters Logan Pierce and Jennifer Pritchard were too much for the Crimson to handle, as Winthrop handed Harvard its only loss of the weekend.

W. Volleyball 3, Northeastern 1

The Crimson fared better against Northeastern (6-12), winning the match, 3-1.

“Northeastern was a bigger team, so we needed to play defense first,” said Harvard Coach Jennifer Weiss.

Harvard’s defensive effort was led by junior Mariah Pospisil and sophomore Kaego Ogbechie. The duo provided a physical presence to frustrate Northeastern’s spikers.

Pospisil finished with three blocks and Ogbechie had six.

Harvard’s defense helped the team to wins of 30-23, 30-25 and 30-26. Its only loss was by a score of 30-28 in game three.

W. Volleyball 3, Dartmouth 1

Completing a season sweep of Dartmouth (4-7, 0-2) was a great accomplishment for the Crimson, as the squad sought revenge for a loss last season.

“We didn’t want to get into a shot game with Dartmouth, because they’re very good at keeping the ball inbounds,” Weiss said.

Harvard played aggressively and jumped on Dartmouth right away, winning the first two games by margins of 30-22 and 30-18.

Early on it was evident that the more athletic Crimson team was looking to pump up its defense.

“We tried to work on getting to the perimeters,” said junior Nathalie Miller.

Guarding the perimeters enabled the Crimson to slow down Dartmouth’s offense. Miller finished with 16 defensive digs for the match, as well as 13 kills.

After dropping the third game to Dartmouth, the Crimson looked to finish out the match in the fourth game. Harvard built leads of 7-0 and 17-10 , and every time Dartmouth would attempt to crawl back, the Crimson would slam the door with its defense.

Dartmouth mounted small rallies, but the Crimson’s blockers seemed to frazzle the Big Green’s spike game.

“We made a lot of points off their errors,” Miller said.

Harvard eventually closed out the 30-26 victory with a spike by junior Amy Dildine.

Junior Allison Bendush and sophmore Kaego Ogbechie had strong perfomances. Bendush finished with a team-leading 18 kills, and Ogbechie added 16 kills.

Ogbechie was complimented by captain and setter Mindy Jellin. Jellin finished with 58 sets and a team-leading 19 digs.

“Mindy did a wonderful job for us all weekend. She has five of our hitters in double digits each game for kills, and is really spreading out the offense nicely,” Weiss said.

Harvard is looking ahead to games against Yale and Brown this coming weekend.

“We showed signs of brilliance against Dartmouth. If we can build on that going into next weekend it will be great,” Weiss.said.

—Contributing writer Matthew J. Amato can be reached at amato@fas.harvard.edu.