Westmont volleyball is off to its best start in a decade. Not since the 2002 campaign ? the last time Westmont made it to the NAIA national tournament ? has a Warrior team won seven of its first eight games.
Over the weekend, the 24th-ranked Warriors played in the ASICS/Crown Plaza Labor Day Tournament at Concordia, winning three out of four matches. Westmont’s only loss this season came in its first match of the Irvine tournament to No. 3 Lee (Tenn.) by a score of 3-2.
“I thought we battled them very well,” said Westmont head coach Patti Cook. “They took us out of our game a little bit with tough serving, but we were doing the same right back at them. We knew what they were going to do and they knew what we were going to do so it became a head-to-head battle.
After winning the first set 25-23, the Warriors dropped the second set by the same score. Westmont rallied with a 25-22 win in set three, but Lee roared back to take the fourth set 25-15 and the decisive fifth set 15-9.
“(Setter) Candice (Adema) played very well, diversifying the offense against Lee,” said Cook.” We were able to use a lot of variables on our offense. Our attackers were playing very well until we went into a bit of a slump in the fourth game.”
Sophomore outside hitter Madison Serrano connected for 17 kills against Lee while junior middle blocker Ciara Turner added another 14.
“We were able to focus in and get right back to it,” said Cook regarding her team’s response to its first loss of the year. “The players have a great ability to rest, refocus and get back into the game. They learned from the experience and then the moved on. They had their eyes forward.”
Move on they did, defeating Illinois Tech in Friday’s second match in straight sets (25-12, 25-19, 25-21). Serrano tallied ten kills in the match while sophomore right-side hitter Heidi Thompson added another nine. As a team, Westmont tallied 16 blocks against Illinois Tech, eight by Adema (seven assisted, one solo).
On Saturday morning, Westmont matched up with Westminster (Utah) and recorded a team single-match record 20 service aces on their way to a 3-1 (25-14, 25-20, 21-25, 25-18) win. Thompson recorded eight of the aces while Serrano added another seven. Serrano led the Warriors again on the attack, posting 17 kills. Junior middle blocker Alexandria Wilson contributed another nine kills to the Warriors’ cause.
The afternoon game proved to be a one-sided affair with Westmont cruising to a three-game sweep (25-17, 25-15, 25-18) over Menlo. Turner was the kill leader for the Warriors, recording 10 kills and a .444 attack percentage. Freshman Sydney Striff pounded down seven kills without making an error, giving her an attack percentage of .412.
