Wooster, Ohio — The Oberlin College volleyball team fell to Marietta College and Westminster College on day one of the Ginny Hunt Kilt Classic on The College of Wooster campus Friday evening.
Marietta Recap
The Yeowomen opened the classic with a gut-wrenching five-set loss to the Marietta College Pioneers. After dropping the first two games, 25-17, 25-23, the Yeowomen responded by flipping the script to win the next two sets 25-16 and 25-19 to setup the decisive fifth set. Unfortunately, it was the Pioneers who won the race to 15, edging the Yeomen 15-10 to take the match.
Maura Gibbs continued her consistent offensive play, guiding the attack with 11 kills on 24 swings to accompany her 12 digs and three aces in the match. Junior
Lexi Mitchell added 13 kills, but 17 of her 45 attempts went for errors.
Sara Chang (17) and
Samantha Lam (15) did their part to keep the Yeowomen in system as they combined for 32 assists. Lam also added 12 digs - one shy of
Julia Ingoglia's team-high 13 in the setback.
Both teams struggled to keep the ball in play as Oberlin hit .076 with 30 errors, while the victorious Pioneers hit -.007 with 34 kills and 35 errors.
In the match-deciding fifth set, the Yeowomen got within two points down stretch on three different occasions. The last was a kill from Chang to cut the Pioneer lead down to 12-10, but Marietta would rip off the next three points to secure the victory.
Oberlin won the battle at the net with 12 block assists compared to Marietta's four.
Jaya Flynn-Young,
Natasha Radic,
McLean Sammon, and Mitchell each had three in the setback.
Westminster Recap
After a hard fought first match the Yeowomen had a rematch with the Westminster College Titans, who beat Oberlin in straight sets earlier in the year. Unfortunately for Oberlin the Titans did the same at Wooster as they prevailed, 25-17, 25-22, 25-13.
Down 1-0, the Yeowomen battled in the second frame and a Radic kill knotted the set up at 22-22. Unfortunately, the Titans claimed the final three points and used their momentum to cruise to a 25-13 decision in the decisive third game.
Lam kept the offense moving as she assisted on 20 of the team's 39 kills. Mitchell had a strong performance as she finished with a hitting percentage of .440 and a team-high 12 kills. As a team the Yeowomen hit .216 with 17 errors in the match.
On the other side of the net, Mitchell led the team with 14 digs, while Kelkar finished with eight. The Yeowomen struggled to slow the Titans offense down at the net as they only recorded two blocks, which allowed Westminster to hit .327 with 36 kills and just four errors.
The Yeowomen will look to rebound tomorrow on day two of the invitational. Oberlin faces Pitt-Bradford at 1 p.m., followed by a match against Franciscan University at 3:30 p.m.
