Athlete of the Week: Clemens' Performance Helps Extend Men's Volleyball's Season

Branden Clemens, the captain, senior outside hitter, and top attacker of the Harvard men’s volleyball team is a big guy.

He stands 6’6” and weighs nearly 200 lbs., making him roughly the size of Houston Rockets guard James Harden. In a sport that selects for supersized proportions, only one Crimson player—freshman middle blocker Trevor Dow—is significantly taller.

And when Clemens skies for a block, those dimensions seem to stretch even larger. Frozen in beanpole straightness as his armpit scrapes the eight-foot net, he might as well be a giant.

He’s a big guy. It should be no surprise that he fills up big stages.

This weekend, in a pair of matches against Princeton and NJIT, Harvard experienced what were likely the biggest stages of the year.

At stake was a whole season—or, if you prefer to go further back, four whole seasons of sweaty work. Back-to-back victories over the Tigers and the Highlanders would give the Crimson a spot in the four-team EIVA playoffs.

Two losses, or even a lone loss to NJIT, would end the year.

It was with this knowledge that Clemens laced up his shoes on Friday night. And it was with this knowledge that he unlaced them roughly 24 hours later, newly minted as a 2016 playoff contender.

“We’re a team that deserves to be in the playoffs,” Clemens said. “It’s incredible that we clinched. I’m just so happy about it.”

In both contests, Clemens—who played every second of every point—led decisive sequences that erased deficits.

Against the Tigers, the score stood at 9-8 in the second set when Clemens rose for his first jump serve. Harvard clutched a 1-0 set lead, but an early-game run by Princeton had the hosts playing catch-up.

The Crimson caught up soon enough. Over the next nine points, Clemens unloaded the longest service run of the weekend. He recorded two aces, forced two Tigers timeouts, and created an insurmountable lead. Harvard didn’t trail for the rest of the night.

The streak came on a night when Clemens led all attacking players with 10 kills and a .667 hitting percentage. Half of these finishes came in the clinching third game.

By the way, he also tied for the Harvard lead with four block assists.

The performance had teammates such as sophomore setter Marko Kostich waxing nostalgic.

“The last two games were entirely played for our seniors,” Kostich said. “We really emphasized that in the locker room.”

Yet the next night’s performance was arguably more impressive. Earlier in the season, NJIT had squeaked by the Crimson in five sets, and the hosts needed to reverse that result in order to extend the season.

Midway through the fourth set, the two programs seemed headed for another tiebreaker duel, as the Highlanders had come back from a two-set deficit to lead 10-6 in the fourth.

If momentum had ever existed, it was wearing blue-and-red at that moment.

“Knowing it was my last match here I wanted to give it my all,” Clemens said. “I have nothing left to lose, so I wanted to give it my all.”

On this night, giving it his all meant recording five kills over the next seven points. It was a remarkable one-man performance, and it dragged the Crimson to a 12-11 lead.

Even as he topped all players with 18 finishes, Clemens also posted a .343 kill rate, which was higher than any NJIT player with more than three attacks.

Later in the final frame, Clemens showcased his defensive skills by skidding across the floor for a deep dig. Play continued, Harvard eventually claimed the point, and Clemens came up yelling. Even if you were wearing mufflers, it was possible to lip-read his words: “Let’s go, boys.”

The boys went, sure enough. All it took was a six-point service run by Kostich (partly aided by another Clemens kill), and the Crimson took the match. For another weekend, the team’s season—and Clemens’ career—lived on.

As Kostich explained, there was a satisfying karma to the final result.

“We owe [the seniors] the world,” Kostich said. “They showed us around when we were high-schoolers…. We’re kind of repaying them now.”

—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sam.danello@thecrimson.com.