Women's volleyball smoothly wins two

While UR students, alumni and parents enjoyed the festivities of Meliora Weekend, the volleyball team was on a two-game road trip to Elmira College. Coming back from a loss to Washington University last week, the Yellowjackets defeated two teams this past weekend. They swept both Elmira College and SUNY Potsdam 3-0.On Friday evening, UR defeated Elmira, a team ranked ninth in the state, 31-29, 30-18 and 30-22. Sophomore Susan Johnson had 13 kills and 21 digs while senior Kristin Vogt had 15 kills and six blocks. Senior setter Liz Loveless added 37 assists to the game.Despite struggling in the first game of the match, Rochester hung on to easily defeat their opponent in the next two games. After they got into a groove at the end of the first game, they became unstoppable.”We struggled in our first game against Elmira because of some communication problems,” junior Kate Czarniak said, who contributed six kills and three blocks. “Once we sorted that out, we played very consistently and gained the win.””The first game against Elmira just took us a while to warm up,” Kraay said. “Once we did, we played really well.”The team easily beat Potsdam 30-18, 30-16 and 30-19 the morning after. Kraay had 14 digs in the game, adding to a total of 28 for the weekend. Johnson had 15 kills and 12 digs, the second double-double for the weekend and her 11th straight in the past four weeks. Vogt continued her spiking mood with 11 kills. Loveless had another collection of superb sets with 26.With their two wins this weekend, the Yellowjackets surpassed Emory and went on to third place in the United Athletic Association standings. Although they claimed the third spot in the standings this week, Emory is only one and a half games back. Moreover, Rochester is only one and a half games behind Washington University, the second-place team. With the fall season winding down, UR hopes to continue their level of competitive play in order to remain at the top of the standings and to earn their spot in the volleyball finals next month.The team has a tough schedule coming up. On Wednesday, they will face SUNY Geneseo, who they managed to defeat in a hard-fought match of five games five weeks ago. Next up is the second UAA Round Robin Tournament.Lee can be reached at alee@campustimes.org.