Springfield Powers Past M. Volleyball

Whoever said that home is where the heart is apparently didn’t take into account the 2002 Harvard men’s volleyball team.

For the second straight time at home—and the third straight time overall—the Crimson (2-4, 1-2 Hay) was swept in demoralizing fashion. Harvard fell in three tightly-contested games (30-27, 30-28, 30-22) to the Springfield Pride (7-4, 2-1) last night at the sparsely populated Malkin Athletic Center.

“One or two plays one way or another could have changed things,” said Harvard Coach Tom Wilson. “But they made the plays when it mattered and we didn’t.”

The Crimson began the match by taking advantage of some Pride hitting errors and an emphatic block by co-captains Justin Denham and Mike Bookman to surge out to a quick 4-1 lead.

Springfield responded, however, capitalizing on three strong kills from senior middle blocker James Seitleman to move ahead, 6-5.

The first game continued in this back-and-forth manner, with the teams exchanging serving errors and kills. Crimson freshman outside hitter Abe Marouf, who ended the match with a team-high 11 kills, paced Harvard with five in the game.

Knotted with the Pride at 27, the Crimson let the first game slip out of its grasp, conceding three consecutive points as freshman outside hitter Juan Ramos committed a service error and the Pride tallied two kills.

Ramos’ costly service error was reflective of the Crimson’s inability to execute effectively throughout the game. For the match, Harvard finished with 14 service miscues.

“Rally scoring makes it difficult to side out,” Bookman said. “We need to serve tough, but we’re making too many errors.”

The sloppy play continued for the Crimson in the second game. As a team, Harvard had a .182 hitting percentage in the stanza and was largely ineffective with the block.

“[Springfield] definitely did its homework,” Bookman said. “They know we don’t defend the ‘5’ that well and it was tough to get a block on that attack.”

Despite its low hitting percentage and failure to block consistently, the Crimson was able to hang with the Pride for the entire second game. An assist by junior middle blocker Alex Kowell led to a Marouf kill to tie the game at 28.

Unfortunately for Harvard, another Ramos error combined with a timely kill by Pride swingman Chris Hosley shut the door on a possible Crimson rally and sent Harvard into a deep hole.

“When you’re down 2-0 in the match, it’s definitely a tough situation mentally,” Wilson said. “However, we wouldn’t have been in that position if we had played better in the first two games.”

The third game followed the precedent set by the first two, with the Crimson taking a slight advantage, but the Pride recovered with a kill to go up, 16-15. The two teams then exchanged points until Pride swingman Clay Spiegel reeled off two consecutive service aces to break open the game.

After the aces and a Harvard timeout, Springfield scored eight of the game’s final 10 points to seal the game and secure the sweep.

Aside from the occasionally inconsistent blocking and serving, the Crimson played a more solid match than its last home loss to Roger Williams. Some of the improvement is most likely due to the return of middle blocker Denham, who had been sidelined earlier in the season with back pain.

On the injury front, Harvard is still without the services of one of its up-and-coming stars, freshman outside hitter Will Reppun. The 6’2 Hawaii native has missed significant game action since injuring his ankle at Southampton.

“[Reppun] brings incredible ball-handling skills and is another offensive weapon, but above all, he’s just a great volleyball player,” Bookman said. “We hope to have him back for this weekend.”

Harvard will need all the help it can get as it seeks to straighten out its season with three consecutive home league matches. This Saturday afternoon, the Crimson will take on the best team in the Hay Division, NYU, and on Sunday afternoon, the Harvard squad will face off against East Stroudsberg. Both games are at 2 p.m.

Wilson contends that the team “must win” its remaining home league games in order to stay in the hunt for the title, and Bookman agrees that key wins at home are needed to “right the ship.”

With less than 20 fans at last night’s game, though, the “home court” advantage has yet to materialize for the young Crimson squad this season.

And if things don’t change soon for Harvard, then there really will be no place like “home.”