Volleyball takes pair in Conn.

But the Quakers finished their regular season by losing to Manhattan for the first time ever. For most of this season, the Penn volleyball team has been making progress. Unfortunately for the Red and Blue, for every two steps they have taken forward, they always seem to drop back one pace. That is just what happened to the Quakers on their road trip to Connecticut over the weekend, when they traveled to Sacred Heart and to the Yale Tournament. Penn (14-13) won twice but dropped its final regular season contest. While the Quakers finished their regular season over .500 for the first time since 1996, they will have some work to do this week while preparing for the upcoming Ivy League tournament. "We really need to work on finishing games and getting to point 15," Penn defensive specialist Alexis Zimbalist said. "We did a good job fighting, but we need to work on the mental aspects of our game." Those mental aspects were Penn's downfall against Manhattan (17-11) on Saturday. After playing a very strong match against Loyola (6-22) in the morning, the Quakers got off to a horrible start against the Jaspers, falling 15-5 in the first game. The Quakers fought back in the second and third games, but the Jaspers held off the attack, winning the match 15-5, 15-12, 17-15 to beat Penn for the first time in history. "I think we underestimated them," said Quakers middle blocker Kelly Szczerba, who was named to the All-Tournament team. "We came out too slow, and by the time we started picking it up, it was too late. [We lost] because we didn't come out strong, and as long as we take care of that, we'll be fine." When Penn has to play more than one match in a day at the Ivy League Tournament this weekend, it should be easier for the Quakers to get off to a strong start, as they will be better motivated. "Manhattan is not Princeton or Brown and it's hard to get up for that," Penn coach Kerry Major said. "I think we know where we're at and where we have to go mentally to prepare for this tournament. We're not where I thought we were or where we should be. We didn't prepare well for the second match, and if we're going to have two matches in a day, I have to do some quick mental preparation for that second match. As a coach, whenever something goes down mentally, you need to figure out how to service the team better." If they hadn't played Manhattan, the Quakers' current outlook would probably be quite different. On Friday night, Penn visited and destroyed Sacred Heart (3-33) in a match that showcased the Quakers bench. Junior setter Amy Schutte had four service aces for Penn in the 15-5, 15-13, 15-8 victory in Fairfield, Conn. "We played really well against Sacred Heart," Major said. "We could have come out poorly, and we didn't. We have a strong bench ready to go, and I'm happy about that." Also encouraging for the Quakers was the performance in Saturday's match with the Greyhounds. Penn lost to Loyola in a match at the Palestra last season, but exacted revenge this time around, winning a 3-0 decision with game scores of 17-15, 15-3, 15-8. Penn hit a strong .272 percentage for the match. Szczerba hit .532 on 13 kills and freshman Stacey Carter tallied 15 kills with a .571 hitting percentage. "Against Loyola, we smoked 'em," Major said. "We fought out the first game, then came back and killed them. That was so important, and that was the best thing I saw this weekend." Despite the Greyhounds' poor record this season, they are much like the Quakers in that they can play very well in spurts. The first game may have been an example, but Penn's quick quashing of Loyola's surge is an encouraging sign for the Red and Blue. "When they played up, they were playing well," Szczerba said. "Last year, I thought we could have beaten them, and this year we came back and did beat them. That's a really great accomplishment for us." But the loss to Manhattan brought the Quakers back down to Earth and left Penn wondering if it had really accomplished what it had set out to do for the weekend. "We did a couple of the things that we've been working on pretty well," Szczerba said. "But there's still a few mental hurdles that we need to get over and hopefully we can do that in this next week of practice." There was a little bit more youthful enthusiasm from Zimbalist. "I thought we played pretty well overall," the freshman said. "We're going to have to work on [some things] but we played pretty solidly, and that's going to help us." While Major was happy with some of the things that the Quakers did on their journey to Connecticut, her goal of using this past weekend to prepare for Penn's trip to New Hampshire at the end of this week for the Ivy tournament was not realized. "I was really hoping to use it as a tune-up for Ivies, and to see my team not mentally meet that challenge was very disappointing for me," Major said. Penn will have one more chance to be strong mentally at the end of this week. If the Quakers disappoint again, the sting will live for the whole off-season, not just a week.