AOTW: Flawless Trimble Makes Foes Tremble

After suffering through a winless Ivy League season last year, the Harvard women’s volleyball team was in search of consistent production from a team leader heading into its 2006 campaign. Through at least nine games, it certainly looks like it has found that person in junior co-captain Suzie Trimble.

Led by Trimble, the Crimson didn’t take long to pick up its first Ancient Eight win in more than 22 months this past weekend, erasing a year’s worth of struggles and bad memories in its Ivy opener.

Trimble’s nearly faultless ability—she finished with one hitting error in 34 total attacks—to find a hole in the Dartmouth defense on Friday night was one of the main ingredients of Harvard’s 3-1 victory over the Big Green.

“Suzie had the match of her life,” Crimson coach Jennifer Weiss said following Trimble’s 23 kills on Friday night.

Trimble finished the Dartmouth match with a .647 hitting percentage, added four blocks, and even managed three digs from her front-row position.

“Suzie is awesome—capital letters awesome,” said fellow junior co-captain Laura Mahon after the match against the Big Green. “She’s taller than a lot of other people, so if the ball is given to her and it’s a good set, she’ll probably kill it.”

As if her Friday performance wasn’t enough, Trimble had a similarly successful outing on Saturday afternoon, in a non-conference 3-1 triumph over Maine.

The 6’1 middle-blocker tallied 15 more kills while hitting .542 in Saturday’s matinee, and she added five more blocks to her team-leading total.

“Suzie’s just a stud,” Mahon asserted after Saturday’s match. “She really just knows how to put the ball away.”

Her rate of success is what was most astonishing. In 58 total swings this weekend, Trimble converted 38 into kills and made only three errors.

Trimble boasted a .595 hitting percentage for the weekend, and she averaged 4.75 kills per game.

“I don’t know of any other hitters in the league who can do that,” Mahon said, adding “it was so exciting to watch her.”

The best part of Trimble’s monstrous effort? The teamwork that led to easy Harvard victories in both matches. Trimble’s stat line certainly stands out, but the intangibles which contributed to it—perfect passes and great sets—were a large part of her success.

“It was such a team effort, starting with the passing and the setting,” Trimble said on Friday night. “We all worked together, and it created a flow.”

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