Attempt at Revenge Falters

The women’s volleyball squad traveled to Hanover, N.H., Friday looking to avenge its first Ivy League loss against Dartmouth. But the Big Green (9-3, 2-0) again proved too much, sweeping the Crimson (5-7, 0-2) for the second time, 3-0 (30-23, 30-21, 30-25).

“We came out really fired up,” senior Laura Mahon said. “But Dartmouth has maintained a level of play this year I’ve never seen before. They really had our number.”

Despite dropping the match, Harvard spread the ball, with eight players recording at least one kill and nine notching at least one dig. Sophomore libero Katherine Kocurek led the defense with a match-high 21 digs. Captain Suzie Trimble dominated the net with four solo blocks to go along with a pair of block assists.

Offensively, Trimble and junior Kathryn McKinley led the Crimson scoring with eight kills apiece. Trimble finished the night hitting .368.

The Big Green out-killed Harvard, 50-35, and held all the Crimson hitters to single digits in kills.

“Dartmouth is good defensively,” Trimble said. “We couldn’t find open spots to put the ball away.”

The Big Green capitalized on a pair of Harvard errors to take an early 3-1 lead. But the Crimson bounced back to draw the score even at 4 following three Dartmouth errors and snagged the lead on a block by Trimble.

The Big Green followed with a 6-0 run to take a 10-5 lead into a Harvard timeout. The Crimson chipped away at the lead, putting together a 7-3 stretch of its own and pulling within one point of Dartmouth, 13-12, after a kill by senior Mimi Hanley.

Though flirting with the lead, the Crimson was on the wrong end of a Big Green 12-4 run that afforded Dartmouth a 25-16 lead. The Big Green maintained that lead en route to its 30-23 game victory.

The scoring danced back and forth in game two as well, as Harvard twice drew the score even. But the Crimson failed to snatch the lead before Dartmouth broke open a 15-9 advantage. Harvard followed with a pair of kills from Trimble and McKinley to cut the lead to four.

But four was as close as the Crimson would get, as the Big Green used a 6-1 stretch to open a 26-17 lead before locking up the 30-21 victory on a Harvard error.

Dartmouth jumped to an early 5-1 lead in game three following two kills from Morgan Covington and a pair of aces by Megan MacGregor. The Big Green really broke it open on Katie Hirsch’s serve, stretching the lead from 12-6 to 19-6.

A series of Dartmouth errors and point-for-point interchanges allowed the Crimson to cut the lead to four, 25-21.

But with the score at 28-25, the Crimson surge was too late, as a Harvard error and a Jess Thomas kill cinched the 30-25 Big Green victory.

“Letting other teams get runs is obviously not in our game plan,” Trimble said. “But, even so, we were able to come back from a big deficit.”

Dartmouth moved to 2-0 in the Ivies with the result, while Harvard dropped to 0-2.

“We need to work really hard this week,” Mahon said. “We have some big, big matches coming up.”

Harvard will travel to Central Connecticut State tomorrow for its last non-conference matchup against the 13-4 Blue Devils before taking on the rest of the Ancient Eight, starting with Brown on Friday night and Yale on Saturday afternoon.

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.