W. Volleyball Rolls With Victories Over Yale, Brown

The dust of the Ivy League came to the Malkin Athletic Center, and the Harvard women’s volleyball team got out its brooms.

The Crimson (12-6, 7-1) scored a pair of 3-0 wins this weekend over Brown and Yale, keeping Harvard a game ahead of second-place Cornell (12-6, 6-2) in the Ivy standings just past the halfway point in league play.

“Right now being first in the league is huge for us,” co-captain and middle hitter Kaego Ogbechie said. “It makes it that much more exciting to play a team that you’ve already beaten. You know what they run, you know their offense, and you know their defense. We’re really anxious to go through the second [run] through the league.”

The Big Red defeated Princeton—the only Ivy team to beat the Crimson—3-1 this weekend to move a half-game ahead of the third-place Tigers (14-5, 5-2).

Freshman outside hitter Laura Mahon led the team in kills with 23 and chipped in 20 digs on the weekend, while Ogbechie added 22 kills and paced Harvard with 24 digs.

HARVARD 3, BROWN 0

Most of the time sweeps are based solely on talent.

This one was about will.

Harvard allowed Brown to get to the midway points first in games two and three, but closed furiously in each frame en route to a 3-0 (30-21, 30-26, 30-27) victory on Saturday afternoon.

Senior outside hitter Nilly Schweitzer led the Crimson in digs with 11 and Ogbechie posted a match-high 14 kills without committing a single attack error.

With Harvard trailing 15-14 in the third game, Ogbechie rattled off three straight kills to put the Crimson ahead. After the Bears rallied to reclaim the lead 19-18, Ogbechie went to work again, posting a thunderous kill and hitting a low serve that bounced off the top of the net and fell straight down on the Brown side for an ace.

“Kaego is a phenomenal athlete and when she does something, she can change the momentum,” Harvard coach Jennifer Weiss said.

After a Schweitzer kill pushed Harvard to match point at 29-24, the Bears rattled off three straight points before committing a net violation that gave the Crimson a 30-27 win.

The anticlimactic finish mirrored that of the night before, when Yale staved off two straight Harvard match points, but brushed the net during the third to give the Crimson the match.

“This week we focused on eliminating our own unforced errors, and it’s interesting to see how the opposing team’s errors stand out,” Ogbechie said.

Harvard struggled mightily early in the second frame, allowing Brown to open up a 21-16 lead. The Crimson staged a remarkable rally, capped off by freshman middle blocker Suzie Trimble’s kill that tied the game at 25. On the ensuing point, an apparent ace by Ogbechie was ruled a redo for interference, because the mishandled serve ricocheted backwards and struck the basketball backboard behind the court.

“In a situation like that you have to keep playing,” Ogbechie said. “The game was close and in those types of [situations] you don’t want the officials or the refs to decide it, you want your own play to decide it.”

The Bears took the replayed point, but the Crimson responded taking the last five points of the game for a 30-26 win.

After spotting Brown the first point of the opening frame, Harvard took the next three on kills by Mahon, Schweitzer and Trimble and never looked back. The Crimson recorded five blocks and capitalized on six unforced errors by the Bears, as Harvard coasted to the 30-21 win in game one.

HARVARD 3, YALE 0

This time, the Harvard rejection notices came on the court, not through U.S. Mail.

The Crimson recorded 11 blocks—4.5 coming from Trimble—and dug 63 balls in a 3-0 (30-25, 30-19, 30-24) win over Yale on Friday night.

“We’ve been working a lot in practice on playing disciplined defense and getting four hands up on the block at all times,” Gould said. “Tonight we got our feet to the right places, which made all the difference.”

“The blockers did a good job of tracking the setter,” Weiss added. “Our goal was to shut down the outside hitters, and we did that.”

Schweitzer recorded a match-high 14 kills and Mahon and sophomore outside hitter Katie Turley-Molony added 13 a piece.

“We were trying to diversify our offense,” Weiss said. “We had a plan to spread the ball around and got three players into double-figures [in kills].”

Co-captain and setter Kim Gould recorded 15 digs, tied for the most in the contest with Ogbechie.

The Crimson recorded six blocks in the decisive third frame and posted 21 kills on a .514 hitting percentage. The Bulldogs did all they could to stay close early, bringing the score even at seven after Mahon had a kill attempt sail long.

But Harvard caught fire, running off 10 of the next 11 points. Four Crimson errors allowed Yale to cut the gap to six, 21-15, but Harvard clamped down, trading points with the Bulldogs for the rest of the game for a 30-24 win.

“We really had the momentum by the time we got to the third game,” Gould said. “We had figured out where their weaker block was and had gotten a sense for what was working.”

One monstrous run was all Harvard needed to push it past Yale in the second frame as well. Leading 10-8, the Crimson put together an 11-2 run, including three kills by Turley-Molony. An ace by Gould gave Harvard a 13-point lead—its biggest of the match—as the Crimson easily took the middle game 30-19.

Yale brought everything it had in game one, jumping out to a quick 3-0 lead. The Bulldogs continued to hang around after Harvard pulled ahead, but four consecutive kills by Schweitzer gave the Crimson a cushy 19-13 lead.

Yale closed the gap to two, 26-24, but Schweitzer floated an attack attempt that found the back corner of the court to stem the surging Bulldogs. Ogbechie did the rest for Harvard, recording a kill and blocking a Yale hitter twice on the same play, as the Crimson closed out the first frame.

“It’s always a challenge at the start,” Gould said. “You kind of need to get a little momentum, get your rhythm going, but the key is, once you get warmed up, you need to take care of what you need to do on your side.”

—Staff writer Michael R. James can be reached at mrjames@fas.harvard.edu.