Women's volleyball suffers four-game loss to Penn in Ivy opener

Last Friday night the women's volleyball team lost its Ivy League opening match to the Quakers three games to one. Princeton expected to dominate this game, but the Quakers had different ideas as they jumped out to a quick lead and never looked back.

However, dropping one league match certainly does not mean doom for the Tigers, since their last loss to the Quakers was a 3-1 defeat in 1993. That year the Tigers ended with a 21-8 overall record (5-2 Ivy League), including a 13-game winning streak.

"We have a lot of potential on our team," sophomore outside hitter Kerry Song said. "We definitely played below our potential."

For the first few weeks of this season, the Tigers have had trouble finding the point at which all the players on the court fit together and play in unison. The Penn match was no different. Princeton flashed brilliantly at times, only to fade like an old light bulb.

"We didn't play well together," Song said. "Some people would be playing great at one time, but then the rest of the team wouldn't be. We just haven't been able to click yet."

Princeton made several costly errors that Penn took advantage of to snatch momentum from the Tigers. The changes in scoring this year have made every mistake a possible catastrophe, now that side outs have been done away with in favor of rally scoring, in which a point is scored on every play.

"Missed serves really cost us because the other team gets a point on the side out, as opposed to years past when they only got to serve," Song said.

After losing the first two games (30-26, 30-22), Princeton fought back into the match, winning the third game, 30-28, and changing the tide of the match in the process.

"We won the third game and had momentum going into the fourth," Song said. "Then we were ahead in the fourth, and we got into a rut. We missed a serve, and they scored about 10 points in a row."

Though the 30-17 loss in the fourth game ended the match decisively in favor of Penn, Princeton feels that it hasn't lost a chance to win the Ivy League.

"They're not better than us, but they played better than us," Song said. "We all realize something has to be changed. The team is very close and we're all really good friends [off the court]."

If the Tigers do not start to gel as a team on the court as well as they have off of it, Princeton fans could be having headaches over a talented team that cannot pull it together.

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"The losing has brought us together and made us work harder. It's really frustrating, but we think we should still have a good season," Song said.

Next Friday night, the Tigers will have a chance to make up for the loss when they face Cornell at 7 p.m., and Columbia on Saturday at 4 p.m, both at Dillon.

Sophomore outside hitter Kellie Cramm, who posted 17 kills and 21 digs on Friday, has had a string of great games, but most of the Tigers have not been playing up to their potential. They need to show their mettle the way Quakers hitter Elizabeth Kwak-Hefferan and setter Jodie Antypass, who had 42 assists, did.

Kwak-Hefferan ended with match highs in kills, with 19, and digs, with 21, while senior setter Ana Yoerg led the way for Princeton with 48 assists.