ITHACA, N.Y. – The Big Red volleyball team jumped out to a pair of dominant wins in the first two sets and then held off Harvard's comeback bid to earn a hard-fought 3-2 victory this evening in Newman Arena. With the win, Cornell improves to 10-9 overall (6-4 Ivy) and moves into a tie with the Crimson for third place in the Ivy League standings.
The game was the Big Red's first five-set match in the Ivy League this season, winning 25-16, 25-19, 21-25, 22-25, 15-10.
Kit McCarty led Cornell with 19 kills, just one off her career-high, while also hitting an incredible .471 for the match (19-3-38).
Samanta Arenas (14) and
Kara Rogers (11) both finished with double-digit kills, while
Jenna Phelps hit a team-high .471 (8-0-17) to go along with six total blocks (one solo).
As a team, Cornell hit .278 (68-19-176), its third highest hitting percentage of the season as every Big Red player finished with a positive hitting percentage.
Defensively, libero
Kiley McPeek posted a team-high 20 digs, while defensive specialist
Lily Barber tallied 18.
Freshman setter
Zoe Chamness finished with a 31-assist, 12-dig double-double, while senior
Chelsea Sincox added 23 assists to the cause.
Harvard (11-8; 6-4 Ivy) was led by Christina Cornelius and Maclaine Fields with 17 and 15 kills, respectively. Fields also led the Crimson with a .400 hitting percentage (15-3-30). The duo also registered three blocks apiece.
Cornell led wire-to-wire in the first set and overcame an early 3-2 Crimson lead in the second set to storm out to a 2-0 advantage heading into the break.
The next two sets were closely contested throughout, featuring a combined 11 ties, but Harvard was able to scratch out a pair of wins to knot the match at 2-2.
"As a staff we knew that Harvard wasn't going to go down that easy so we fully expected them to come out after the break and really push us," said
Trudy Vande Berg, The Wendy Schaenen '79 Head Coach Of Volleyball at Cornell. "They got their middles involved and started to do things that they're more comfortable doing."
Cornell jumped out to a quick 4-1 lead in the decisive fifth set, but the Crimson responded with a 4-1 run of its own to tie the set at 5-5. A kill from Rogers, followed by a Harvard error gave the Big Red a lead it would not relinquish. For the set, Cornell had just one hitting error, and McCarty registered five kills on just seven attempts to lead the way.
"We got back into our rhythm in the fifth set," said Vande Berg. "We started passing better, getting touches on the block, and just took control. We continued to serve tough and our serve-receive came together. In that fourth set our serve-receive broke down because they were serving really tough, but we took a deep break and started passing again. And then Kit took some amazing swings for us."
The Big Red is back in action next weekend when it travels to Penn and Princeton. Cornell takes on the Quakers on Friday, Nov. 3 at 7 p.m., before it battles the Tigers on Saturday, Nov. 4 at 5 p.m.
