Ivy Title Hopes On the Line for Women's Volleyball

In the past decade, no women’s volleyball team in the Ivy League has won the conference championship with more than two Ancient Eight losses. So, when the Harvard women’s volleyball team fell to 1-2 in conference play after a straight-set loss to Brown on Oct. 4, odds at making a run for the title looked bleak. There was seemingly only one option if the team wanted to accomplish its goal of claiming the league: win out.

And that’s just what the Crimson has done thus far.

Riding a nine-game winning streak, Harvard (17-4, 10-2 Ivy) enters this weekend tied with Yale atop the Ancient Eight standings with home games against Columbia and Cornell to round out the regular season schedule. With victories over the Lions and Big Red, the Crimson guarantees at least a one-game playoff with Yale and perhaps, with a Bulldogs loss, outright possession of the Ivy League throne.

“Our entire season comes down to these last two games,” junior libero Sindhu Vegesena said. “After…going to five with both Princeton and Penn, we understand now more than ever that a few points in the fifth set can make or break us.”

While Harvard has been on top of its game over the past five weeks, Columbia (7-14, 3-9) finds itself trending in the opposite direction. After a 3-1 start on the season, the Lions have lost their last eight, including a 3-2 defeat to the Crimson to begin the streak.

Despite the lack of recent success, the Lions still trot out one of the best attackers in the Ivy League in junior outside hitter Bailey Springer. The junior ranks third in the conference in kills per set with 3.4. Fellow junior Katarina Jovicic headlines the defense for Columbia, leading the Ancient Eight with 1.09 blocks per set.

The Crimson hopes its balanced attack will break through the defense of Jovicic and others. The Harvard offense is led by two of the four most efficient attackers in the league in junior Caroline Holte and co-captain Caroline Walters, who ranks first in the Ivy League with a .41 kill percentage.

“Across the board [Ivy League] teams have the talent and volleyball IQ,” Vegesena said. “But the team that comes out on top is the one that wants it more. And that’s been our defining advantage this season.”

While upperclassmen have dominated playing time this year, Crimson freshman Paige Kebe was the star of the night in the season’s first matchup between the squads. Kebe recorded a team-high 22 kills, her first and only time cracking double-digits since her arrival on campus this year.

Cornell (5-17, 2-10) will also enter Cambridge on a losing streak, albeit one of a lesser magnitude, three games. In the team’s last three contests against Penn, Princeton, and Yale, the Big Red has only won one set.

But Cornell still poses a threat to Harvard’s title hopes. In her first year with the team, freshman Maddy Sroufe ranks among the top ten in the Ivy League in kills per set with 2.9. The Big Red also sends out senior libero Natasha Rowland, who leads the conference with 5.5 digs per set.

The Crimson managed to dispel the Big Red in quick fashion earlier this season in Ithaca, defeating Cornell in straight sets. Sophomore Corinne Bain was the only player to record double-digit kills in the game with 11 of the 37 total for Harvard. Freshman Emily Wemhoff led the Lions with eight kills.

Despite the combined 11-game losing streak that the two New York teams bring to Cambridge this weekend, the message for Harvard remains the same: one game at a time.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the idea of winning the Ivy League title,” junior Caroline Holte said. “Keeping [our mentality] in one point and one game increments…is what is going to be most important for us going forward.”

—Staff writer Kurt T. Bullard can be reached at kurtbullar@college.harvard.edu.