Losses End Bid for .500 Record in Ivies

The Harvard women’s volleyball team hit the road this weekend in an effort to turn its season around, looking for two crucial Ivy League wins at Penn and Princeton.

Unfortunately, after getting down early in both matches, the Crimson (9-12, 3-7 Ivy) comeback effort was stifled twice, leading to a 3-1 loss at Princeton on Friday night and 3-2 heartbreaker at Penn on Saturday.

“For us, it’s really important to get a couple points and the lead in the beginning, because we tend to start down,” junior co-captain Laura Mahon said. “That kind of kills our morale and we never catch back up.”

In both matches, Harvard found itself in an insurmountable 2-0 hole.

At Princeton (17-2, 7-2), the Crimson took game three, before falling in four. At Penn (7-13, 4-5), Harvard battled to force game five, before the decisive game went to the Quakers.

With the losses, the Crimson falls to seventh place in the Ivy League and becomes mathematically eliminated from Ancient Eight title contention.

With just four games remaining, Harvard is back in action next weekend at the Malkin Athletic Center to take on first-place Cornell and last-place Columbia.

PENN 3, HARVARD 2

Despite 20 kills from senior Katie Turley-Molony and a massive Crimson comeback, Penn held on to take the match in five games from Harvard (30-22, 30-20, 27-30, 28-30, 15-12) in Philadelphia.

Game one was a see-saw battle, as no team led by more than four, when the Quakers took a 23-19 advantage. Penn then finished off the Crimson, outscoring them 7-3 to take game one, 30-22.

Game two was a slightly different story, as the Quakers took a six point advantage at just 18-12, never letting the Crimson make a significant run, en route to a 30-20 win and a 2-0 lead.

“The first two games were definitely good games, we definitely hustled,” senior setter Sarah Cebron said. “But we were really not in our system, and we were not playing up to the level that we could.”

“In the third game, we really fired it up,” she added.

A lineup change which moved sophomore Kathryn McKinley to the libero spot and Turley-Molony to the outside brought Harvard the success it had failed to find in the previous two games.

Turley-Molony had 9 of her 20 kills in game three, as the Crimson took a 10-9 lead it never relinquished, leading by as many as six, before taking game three, 30-27.

The comeback effort looked dead, though, as the fourth game began, when Penn jumped out to a 7-1, and later a 19-10 lead.

But Harvard refused to quit, and used three Quaker attack errors to score the next six points, to pull within 19-16.

Penn widened the gap a bit more, though, taking a 27-23 lead. But two kills each from Turley-Molony and junior Suzie Trimble were part of a 7-1 Crimson run to finish the game.

“That was an exciting game,” Mahon said. “We just really picked it up and we were playing so well once the third game hit.”

Harvard jumped out to a 7-4 lead in game five, and it was looking like the comeback would happen after all. But, five Crimson errors gave Penn an 11-9 advantage, and a game-ending block by the Quakers’ Natalie Drucker and Anna Shlimak gave Penn the victory.

Turley-Molony also led the team in digs, with 19, and Mahon contributed 18 kills and 11 digs. Harvard hit just .173 for the match, to Penn’s .276.

PRINCETON 3, HARVARD 1

Harvard suffered its first loss of the weekend, 3-1 (30-26, 30-17, 20-30, 30-26), on Friday night in Princeton, NJ against a gritty Tigers team.

Setting the tone for the weekend, the Crimson lost games one and two before turning it up a notch, in an attempt at a come-from-behind victory. A defensively sound Princeton team just wouldn’t let it happen.

“They played really good defense and dug a lot of balls,” Cebron said of the Tigers.

The Tigers led the whole way in game one, opening up a 16-10 advantage, before finishing off the Crimson, 30-26. Princeton sophomore Parker Henritze had 12 of her game-high 28 kills in game one.

Game two brought much of the same, as Harvard again never led, and Princeton opened up leads of 15-5, and 25-13 on the way to a 30-17 win.

“In the second game, they definitely dominated us,” Cebron said. “But, we dominated them in game three.”

In a reversal of roles, the Crimson took the large advantages in game three, using 18 kills while hitting .410 and making just two errors.

Harvard led by as much as 11 and took game three 30-20.

The good fortune would end there, though, as despite taking another early lead at 14-8 in game four, the Tigers battled back to dash the Crimson’s comeback hopes with a 30-26 victory.

McKinley led Harvard with 12 kills, while Mahon had a team-high 15 digs.

—Staff writer Kevin C. Reyes can be reached at kreyes@fas.harvard.edu.