They are not down yet. After a rough start to the season, the Brandeis volleyball team used a 4-1 weekend to bring themselves back up to .500.
Their climb started on Friday with matches against Johnson and Wales and Eastern Connecticut. The Judges lost a tough match to Eastern Connecticut 2-3 (32-30, 28-30, 29-31, 30-25, 13-15). Jenny Sandler 08 and Lorraine Wingenbach 09 had a combined 42 kills and 36 digs between them, while Violette Ruggiero 09 offered up 51 assists. The Judges quickly regrouped and swept Johnson & Wales 3-0 (30-28, 30-18, 30-16). Wingenbach 09 had 13 kills, while Sandler led the defense with 11 digs.
After splitting Fridays series, the volleyball team had to go down to play a three game tournament at the ECSU Crabtree Classic. Brandeis swept the tournament by defeating Wheaton College (MA) 3-2 (30-26, 30-17, 24-30, 24-30, 15-13), and also sweeping Babson College (30-25, 30-27, 30-26) and Lasell College (30-20, 30-18, 30-21). Wingenbach 09 had a combined total of 32 kills and 50 digs over the weekend, earning her the UAA Volleyball player of the week award. Even with her individual dominance, Coach Michelle Kim was quick to highlight the contributions of the team.
This weekend, out of any other weekend, was probably the most team effort weekend, since everyone played. Everyone does their job and you could look at the stats and see some of the higher stats but for outside hitters to get kills – thats their job. For Vi [Ruggiero] to have assists, thats her job, for Shannon Trees to have to dig, thats her job so everyone did their jobs very well and as a team, we came away 4 and 1 so Im happy about that.
Their 4-1 weekend followed a difficult tournament the prior weekend where the team finished 1-2, getting swept by NYU (18-30, 23-30, 23-30) and defeating Case-Western 3-1 (30-27, 30-26, 27-30, 30-25) before getting swept by Washington University (17-30, 15-30, 27-30). To be fair, NYU and Wash U. are nationally ranked (with Wash U. being #1). Defeating Case-Western was a nice victory for this young squad, especially since Case had defeated Brandeis the year before and gave Brandeis their first UAA win in a while.
They play another UAA round robin at Washington University, where theyll face Carnegie-Mellon and Rochester on Saturday and Chicago and Emory on Sunday. Afterwards theyll face Tufts at home on Tuesday.
Theyre still young, theyre definitely not perfect, but so far, they have not given up and have proven that all in all, this team can hang with the big women. Hopefully, if nothing else, theyll ride the momentum all the way to Tuesday against the Tufts Jumbos.
