Women's Volleyball Earns Weekend Split

Last year, the Harvard women’s volleyball team pulled off a stunning upset over Yale that had players and coaches alike in tears, ending the Bulldogs’ 25-match unbeaten streak in the Ancient Eight.

This year, Harvard proved it wasn’t a fluke.

A tone-setting win against rival Yale (6-6, 2-1 Ivy) highlighted a weekend split, as the Crimson (8-4, 1-2) dropped Saturday’s game against Brown in straight sets (6-9, 1-2).

“It’s hard to put [it] all together—we played very well [on Friday] and we knew we had to come out strong against Brown,” Harvard coach Jennifer Weiss said. “We didn’t attain our [desired level of] gameplay.”

BROWN 3, HARVARD 0

Down two sets entering the third period, the Crimson fought off two game points to try to extend the match to a fourth frame. But the third game point proved to be too much for Harvard, which ultimately fell to Brown in the third and final set, 27-25.

Errors highlighted the Crimson’s Saturday matchup at the Malkin Athletic Center. The team combined for 22 service errors and attack errors, averaging more than seven per set.

“They’re a very defensive team [and] they played great defense,” Weiss said. “We didn’t serve them out of system, and that was our goal.”

Following Friday’s matchup that went down to the wire, Harvard came out of the gates flat on Saturday. After dropping the first six points, the Crimson was unable to respond, ultimately losing the last five points of the match as well.

Faltering late in frames was the theme of the match on Saturday. Needing just one point to secure the second set, the Crimson dropped the last four points of the frame to fall two frames behind.

HARVARD 3, YALE 2

Up two sets to one and leading, 20-14, in the fourth frame, the game was seemingly in the bag for Harvard. But a stunning 11-1 run by the Bulldogs, aided by two aces and five Crimson errors, knotted the contest at two sets apiece and sucked all of the energy out of the MAC.

In the decisive fifth set, the two teams battled back and forth, with the Crimson holding a tenuous 10-9 lead. After a kill from co-captain Caroline Walters extended the lead to two, the Crimson regained service rights with sophomore star Corie Bain next in the rotation. A block by sophomore Grace Weghorst and an attack error from Yale had the Crimson within two points of taking down the Bulldogs in consecutive years. Then Bain took over. Two straight aces from last season’s Ivy League Rookie of the Year ended Yale’s hope of redemption and brought the home crowd to its feet.

“We’ve always been focused on working hard…for every point,” Weiss said. “We got ourselves back to believing that every point matters.”

Bain was a force to be reckoned with and recorded yet another triple-double with 11 kills, 32 assists, and 12 digs. Weghorst led the team with 14 kills on the night, while junior libero Sindhu Vegesena led the team with 25 digs, her second-highest total of the year, quelling the Yale attack.

The Crimson came off strong off the blocks, surging to a 20-14 advantage in the first set. But unlike the fourth set, in which the team coughed up the same lead, Harvard weathered a 6-1 run by the Bulldogs to capture the first set, 25-19.

After Yale took the second frame handily, 25-18, behind a handful of Mollie Rogers’ team-leading 14 kills, the Bulldogs seemed to have momentum in hand, jumping out to a 16-12 advantage in the third. Four straight points behind kills from juniors Caroline Holte and Kathleen Wallace, however, reversed the luck of Harvard, which would end the set on a 13-7 run to take a 2-1 lead into the fourth frame.

“Our game against Yale was definitely our best play in the Ivy League this year,” Weghorst said. “We worked together and kept our efforts focused on winning the game.”

—Staff writer Kurt T. Bullard can be reached at kurtbullard@college.harvard.edu.