By: Max Ferguson, Staff Writer
The Gettysburg volleyball team took on Messiah University on Saturday, Sept. 23, and walked away with a 3-1 victory. However, sets alone don’t tell the story of how this match went down.
This matchup started out hot, as Gettysburg and Messiah went blow for blow in the first set. Gettysburg came out on top in the end, albeit not by much. The Bullets took the first set 27-25 in a nail-biting finish. Gettysburg was able to pull away with the win thanks to an error from Messiah, followed by a kill from Erin Gonzalez ’27 put up by Halle Feth ’27.
Set two started out just as close as the first but Messiah ran away with this set by the eleventh point. The Falcons had a 10-point unanswered scoring run that Gettysburg simply couldn’t answer. The difference in performance between sets could be attributed to the fact that the Bullets subbed out the match’s scoring leader Kylie Ulrich ’24.
The third set looked more like what fans expected from the Bullets in this matchup. Gonzalez and Feth were back in after they sat on the bench in the second set. Gettysburg blew away Messiah in this set 25-10. The Bullets got ahead early and once Messiah began scoring, the Bullets answered immediately with points of their own. Blood was in the water once Messiah called a timeout, which signified that the Bullet offensive had beaten them mentally.
The Falcons seemed to regroup in between sets. They clipped the Bullet’s heels for the entire set but couldn’t pull ahead. The beginning of this set was characterized by scoring run after scoring run. Gettysburg and Messiah scored six and four unanswered points on each other respectively. By the end of the set, the two teams were going back and forth. Yet, each team was only scoring in one to two-point bursts. Gettysburg pulled away with the win thanks to the six-point scoring run they had at the beginning of the set.
This match was one of three Gettysburg played over the weekend during the Messiah Quad match against Messiah College, Rowan University, and SUNY Brockport. Gettysburg finished out the weekend undefeated. The Bullets currently hold a dominant 11- 3 record before they start conference play, which begins with Muhlenberg on Saturday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. in Allentown.
