The volleyball team defeated Utica College, SUNY Potsdam and Fairleigh Dickinson Univeristy all by the score of 3-0 while losing to Ithaca 3-1 in the SUNY Oneonta Red Dragon Invitational over the weekend.
Rochester defeated Utica 30-13, 30-8 and 30-13 in their first game. The Yellowjackets then fell to Ithaca College 34-32, 31-33, 30-18 and 31-29 in their second match of the tournament.
Against Utica, senior Kristin Vogt had 10 kills and sophomore Susan Johnson had nine. Senior Grace Kraay had 18 digs and six service aces while Liz Lovelass had 28 assists.
The match against the Ithaca was a rematch of last fall’s Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Upstate semifinals when the Bombers defeated UR at Rochester Institute of Technology. In this year’s loss to the defending ECAC champs, Johnson led UR in kills with 16. Ithaca went on to win the tournament.
UR went 2-0 in the two matches played on Saturday. The Yellowjackets defeated Potsdam 30-26, 30-11 and 30-16 on Saturday morning and FDU 30-18, 30-25, 30-23 on Saturday afternoon.
Against Potsdam, Johnson had eight kills, three blocks and 19 digs. Vogt had nine kills and two blocks. Senior Liz Lovelass led all Yellowjackets with 27 assists. Lovelass also led all Yellowjackets with 44 assists against FDU.
“We were hoping to finish in the top four at the tournament,” junior Kate Czamiak said. “We wanted to get a good start to the season and get all the new freshmen acclimated.”
Sophomore Susan Johnson added, “We played well, but we can definitely improve as a team.”
Although the Yellowjackets finished third in the tournament, the team members felt that they should have been in the final matchup against Ithaca on Saturday.
“We can definitely knock off Ithaca,” Johnson proclaimed. “The next time we meet them, we’ll be more equally matched.”
Czamiak added, “This year we finally want to knock them off.”
UR returned home on Tuesday, Sept. 7 with a 30-22, 30-16, 30-14 win over D’Youville College. Kristin Vogt had 12 kills and five blocks and Susan Johnson added 10 kills as the women’s volleyball team defeated D’Youville, 3-0.
An estimated 300 people were in attendance, watching Lovelass net 32 assists and Kraay pick up 20 digs.
The team worked on improving on some fundamentals in the game against D’Youville. “We wanted to work on focusing on our blocking,” Czamiak explained. “I think we were successful in the last game with that.”
Other teammates recalled more things the Yellowjackets focused on against D’Youville. “We definitely wanted to reduce our errors,” Johnson said.
“We just wanted to play our kind of game on our home court,” Kraay asserted.
UR’s next two matches will be Sept. 11 at SUNY Oswego.
Tipton can be reached at rtipton@campustimes.org.
