Co-captains call out Volleyball after loss

On Saturday, the Penn women's volleyball team opened its Ivy season at home with a familiar result: a loss to Princeton, its sixth-straight loss to the Tigers.

Senior co-captains Steph Gwin and Kathryn Turner have had enough of it.

"There was definitely anger and frustration on the part of Steph and myself, and I know that the two of us decided we're not going to stand for this kind of level anymore," Turner said.

Unfortunately for Penn, that wasn't much help after the fact. The Tigers swept the Quakers (4-9, 0-1 Ivy) Saturday night at the Palestra, improving their Ivy League winning streak to 16 games. Princeton (7-2, 1-0) gained the momentum early and never lost it.

"It's just one of those nights where we couldn't really play much better and I don't think Penn could've played much worse," Princeton coach Glenn Nelson said.

Reigning Ivy League Player of the Year Parker Henritze was unstoppable. Her 13 kills and 11 digs led the Tigers, and her season-high .391 hitting percentage seemed low considering her dominant performance.

"Parker was phenomenal," Nelson said. "That was the best she played all year."

Princeton's strong fan base was a huge source of their early momentum. Free pizza wasn't enough to bring throngs of Penn fans to the Palestra; Princeton's were louder and more energetic. After senior right side hitter Kelli Grobe followed up a kill with a solo block on sophomore Julia Swanson to give the Tigers a 15-5 lead in the third set, Princeton fans started prematurely cheering "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey, goodbye."

Later in the set, they repeated their chant, but their timing was more accurate. The Tigers nearly held the Quakers to single digits, taking the set 25-10.

"They were on fire, but we also enabled them to do that" Penn coach Kerry Carr said. "You don't ever let a team like that get in rhythm, and we did, by not playing our best."

Carr had been mixing up the line-ups throughout their non-conference schedule, trying to find the best group before Ivy season rolled around. In their first Ancient Eight game, the Quakers started each set with a different lineup, leading to inconsistency and poor communication.

But contrary to Nelson's analysis, Penn's biggest weakness was not poor communication or bad passing.

"Honestly, I feel like it was just a lack of people caring and wanting to win the game," Turner said. "People just didn't think we could win."

They were right.

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