Saturday Split for Bullets Volleyball: Women lose to Muhlenberg, conquer Moravian
Photo courtesy of Gettysburg College website. Senior Alesha Miller totaled 17 digs in two matches on Saturday.
By Elizabeth Hilfrank, Staff Writer
The women’s volleyball team challenged Moravian College and Muhlenberg College each to a match on Saturday afternoon and split the success.
Moravian hosted the Centennial Conference competition between the Bullets and Mules.
Muhlenberg, ranked sixth in the conference, swept Gettysburg (eighth) in three sets. The Mules hold a 5-4 record in the conference while the Bullets are 3-5.
Although not arising as victor, Gettysburg posed a strong battle. Each set was close, the first being 25-21, the second 25-23 and the third 25-17.
“It was tough loss for us against Muhlenberg, but I think we did a good job of keeping our offense fast and serves effective,” said junior Laura Bergin.
Bergin had a dozen kills during her time on the court against the Mules. She ranks second in the conference for most kills per set with an average of 3.81. With a total of 324 kills, she is also third in the standings for total number of kills.
Bullets proved defensive on the court as well. Sophomores Stephanie Blair and Katherine Gilbert were prominent with digs. Blair had twelve digs, while Gilbert had sixteen.
Gilbert sits at fourth place in the individual conference leaders for total number of digs with 397. She has an average 4.56 digs per set, putting her in sixth place, respectively.
Blair was not only prominent on the court with digs, as she also had many assists. Bringing in twenty assists against Muhlenberg, she then brought her game up to twenty-two assists against Moravian. Blair ranks fourth in the conference for assists per set with an average of 7.64.
After being swept by the Mules, the Bullets made a fierce return and swept the non-conference Greyhounds in their matchup.
Gettysburg won 25-16, 25-19, then 25-21 to conquer Moravian. It was the Bullets second-best attacking effort of the 2015 season with an attack percentage of .337.
Leading the conference and the team, Bergin had thirteen kills during this second match in addition to eight digs and three aces; yet she was not the only one to have success on the court.
Sophomore Maddie Weikert displayed no errors in all of her twenty-one attempts, while also contributing eight kills for the team during the sets against Moravian.
Glibert also returned to the court to deliver another ten kills while Blair and junior Joosje Grevers each added six to the team’s statistics.
With the determination to come from behind, as seen from the Bullets this past Saturday, one can expect they will continue to work hard to have a successful end of the season.
“There were aspects of our game plan that we did not execute, but we are confident going into our next two conference matches,” said Bergin.
Gettysburg has an overall record of 13-12 this season with only two regular season matches to go. Both games are conference competitions, against F&M and Johns Hopkins, that will occur this week at home.
The Bullets would love everyone’s support at their match against Franklin and Marshall College Wednesday evening at 7PM in Bream Gym.
In addition to celebrating the near-end of the season, the game will also support the new sexual awareness campaign on campus, The Green Dot Program. The goal of Green Dot is to train students how to properly respond and prevent personal violence initiated by power struggle.
All student-athletes attended an introductory meeting about the program at the start of the school year. Many have since become more involved.
The student-athlete participants created a video to be shown between the second and third sets on Wednesday. All spectators are encouraged to wear green as a sign of support.
Everyone is encouraged to attend this multi-purpose event.
