One streak ends, but others continue for a dominant Yale volleyball team.
Penn, the last team to win a set against Yale in Ivy League volleyball play, ended the Bulldogs’ streak of 20 consecutive sets won but were ultimately overwhelmed and fell, 3-1.
The Red and Blue (7-8, 1-3 Ivy) stayed tight with Yale (10-3, 4-0 Ivy) through a tough first set, though errors soon became their downfall. The second set saw a hyper-efficient Yale team dismantle the Quakers with a .308 hitting percentage.
The Quakers couldn’t manage to keep their hitting percentages positive in the first two sets, as they committed 17 errors to just 15 kills.
However, Penn found a way to start hot in the third set, powering ahead to a 18-9 lead. Yale rallied to tie the set at 24-24 before the Quakers closed out the set 27-25 behind a late kill from sophomore Alexis Genske.
The momentum carried over into the fourth set as Penn climbed to an early 10-7 lead. However, Yale won 8 of the next 9 points and never looked back.
The Quakers saw impressive performances from senior captains Susan Stuecheli (10 kills, .500 hitting percentage) and Dani Shepherd (27 digs). Sophomore Alex Caldwell also contributed 27 assists in the loss.
With the victory, Yale extended its streak of Ivy League wins to 19 and its streak of Ivy League regular season home wins to 29.
Yale last lost a match to an Ivy League team on Nov. 12, 2011, against Dartmouth and last lost an Ivy League regular season home match on Oct. 10, 2009, against Penn.
Sophomore middle blocker Jesse Ebner (12 kills, .522 hitting percentage) and senior captain Kendall Polan (32 assists) turned in particularly strong games for Yale. Ebner was the Ivy League’s co-player of the week last week after hitting .533 with 20 kills in games against Harvard and Dartmouth.
Penn will play at Brown (6-8, 2-1 Ivy) on Saturday night, while Princeton (6-7, 2-1 Ivy) comes to visit Yale.
More to come…
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