Pushing a Friday loss to Yale out of its mind, the women's volleyball team bounced back and dominated Brown on Saturday, earning its first Ivy League victory of the season.
After graduating four seniors and bringing in three freshmen, the first few Ancient Eight games have been rocky for the young Quakers.
However, it all finally seemed to click on Saturday.
"This year has been interesting ... we've struggled, but we're talented. We just needed to gain our composure and get some experience. It's hard to rebuild," Penn coach Kerry Major Carr said.
After coming off consecutive losses to Princeton last week and Yale on Friday, the Quakers had their best stuff against Brown.
Carr called the Bears' squad "tougher than both [Yale and Princeton], so we beat the best team, and that's definitely a good sign."
The Yale loss was close. The Red and Blue lost 3-1 but actually started out by winning the first game, 30-23. The Quakers were unable to hold off the Bulldogs, however, as they dropped the next three games, 30-22, 30-18 and 30-25 Penn junior Cara Thomason, last week's Ivy League Player of the Week, ground out 27 digs, while Penn freshman Linda Zhang helped out with 50 assists.
The offensive firepower came from another newcomer, Laura Black, who finished the game with 15 kills. Veterans Michelle Kauffman and Lynzy Caton had 14 and 12 kills, respectively.
Getting better every day, the Quakers displayed marked improvement on Saturday against Brown on the way to earning some much-needed confidence.
"This win was an all-around team effort. We got help from the bench and that always helps," Carr said.
Oddly enough, the Quakers won this game in exactly the same way they lost the day before. This time they lost a close first game, 32-30, but persevered to dictate the next three games, 30-22, 30-22 and 30-21.
Thomason fell one dig short of her career high and the Penn record of 38 in a game, a feat which earned her Player of the Week honors the week before.
Offense came from the usual suspects, this time with Kauffman leading the way with 19 kills. Black had 16, Canton finished with 14 and Zhang had 11.
Even though her balanced performance may not stand out in the box score, rookie Anna Shlimak was pointed out by Carr for leading a stellar defensive outing for the Red and Blue.
"We had a starter go down with a hand injury and Anna stepped right in and played some great defense for us," Carr said. "That was the difference between this game and the others. We played defense against Brown."
The women even had help off the court. Carr said that the bench was "the loudest in the gym," helping to fire up the players between the lines.
Next weekend, the Red and Blue will face an undefeated Harvard squad and Dartmouth in back-to-back days at home. Despite their record, Carr asserts that Harvard "hasn't faced the competition we have. It's important for us to give them their first loss."
Coming off the confidence-building win over Brown, Carr thinks that if the Quakers "keep improving, they'll be fine."
And they'll have their chance to showcase this improvement later on in the season with rematches with Princeton and Yale coming up in the next few weeks.
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