In first game under Goodwin, Volleyball out for good win

The athletes and coaches of the Penn volleyball team know exactly what head coach Kerry Carr, who had a mastectomy on Tuesday, needs right now.

Wins. And lots of 'em.

The Quakers (5-10, 1-2 Ivy) will be looking to add two more when they travel to New England to face off against Brown (9-7, 1-3) and Yale (10-3, 4-0) this weekend.

Victory, not laughter, is what the Red and Blue hope will be the best medicine for Carr's breast cancer.

"That's better than flowers or a card," said interim head coach Ryan Goodwin. "I know that's exactly what she would want."

To give her that, the team plans to turn last Saturday's 3-0 drubbing of Columbia into momentum against two favored squads.

Brown senior Lyndse Yess, first on the Bears in kills and fourth in kill percentage, will lead a fast-starting Brown squad against the Quakers tonight in Providence, R.I.

The Bears have lost six of their last seven, but an 8-1 start to the season showed what they are capable of: a tear that would leave the Red and Blue black and blue.

"Once you get to the Ivy League season, you get psyched up for every game," Penn senior captain Kathryn Turner said. "The caliber is different."

It certainly won't hurt that Carr's health concerns give the team some extra motivation.

"Obviously we play for her at all times," sophomore Julia Swanson, who leads the team in kills, said.

The Quakers will need all of their passion and some luck when they travel to New Haven, Conn., on Saturday.

Yale hasn't lost in Ancient Eight play and is on a six-match winning streak, recently trouncing Dartmouth and Brown by a combined score of 9-1.

And the Elis are having more than just team success; the last three Ivy League players of the week were all Bulldogs.

The most recent Elis player to receive this honor was junior outside hitter Cat Dailey. Dailey tallied 23 kills and 15 digs in Yale's dramatic 3-2 win over Harvard last Saturday.

But the Quakers feel that diligent training and coaching continuity from Carr to Goodwin will earn them a good win, poor pun notwithstanding.

"We're training the same way; we're running the same systems," Goodwin said. "There's a lot of familiar ground that our players are comfortable with."

Whether this continuity helps them or not, the Quakers will always have Carr in the back of their minds.

"We want to make sure that we're aware of how she's doing," Turner said.

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