Volleyball hits roadblock at Amherst Classic

Women’s volleyball traveled to Amherst, Mass. this past weekend for the Amherst Classic, where the squad won one game but lost the other two, making their current season record 8-3. They opened the tournament with a loss to Coast Guard Friday night (3-1), and lost again to Brandeis on Saturday afternoon (3-2).

The team rallied later in the day to finish up with a decisive victory against Wesfield State (3-0). Despite the somewhat disappointing weekend, the team can take comfort in knowing that none of the games were conference matches so they will not affect NESCAC standings.

After an impressive past few weeks, the Panthers showed up at Amherst on Friday lacking the enthusiasm witnessed in previous games. Facing tough competition from a scrappy Coast Guard team, Middlebury caved and conceded a seven-point lead in the first set to start the game. After losing the second set, the Panthers managed to take the third before giving up the fourth set by only two points.

Jane Handel ’12 attributed much of the team’s collapse to the players’ overconfidence coming into the weekend.

“When it came to actually fighting for a game, we just gave up,” Handel reflected. “We were riding high and then we didn’t come out with passion or a will to win.”

The next day, Middlebury took on Brandeis and Wesfield State, winning the latter after losing another close game to Brandeis. Despite pushing the game to a fifth set, the Panthers were unable to pull off a comeback against Brandeis and went down 6-0 to begin the 15-point fifth set.

“We let Brandeis dictate the game and gave up a lot of unforced errors,” said Handel. Teammate Elissa Goeke ’12 added, “We didn’t play up to our standards.”

The final game of the weekend was more like what we’ve come to expect from this team. They made quick work of Wesfield State, winning 3-0 after recovering their focus a bit from the previous two games. The team found their rhythm in this game and returned to Middlebury with a 1-2 record on the weekend.

“Things hadn’t been going well so it was good to try new things out and get a lot of people playing,” explained Caroline Cordle ’12 about the game against Wesfield State. Handel added, “We have a really deep team so we were able to change things up successfully”.

In general this weekend served as a wake up call according to the players. Hopefully they will implement what they learned this past weekend when Middlebury travels to New Hampshire to take on Colby-Sawyer Tuesday night. This weekend the Panthers will see some more NESCAC play when they make the trek to Maine to take on Bates and Colby.