Dartmouth women's volleyball pulled off its seventh win of the season last night in Leede Arena against the University of Vermont after dropping the first game to the Catamounts. The win improved Dartmouth's record to 7-3 for the season.
The Catamounts entered the match not having won a single game all season. While it did gain its first win, Vermont was sent home with a record at to 0-8.
The Vermont women did put forth a strong effort and were rewarded with the first game win over the Big Green, 15-11. The Catamounts, however, could not keep up the intensity and drive to complete the match and dropped the next three games to Dartmouth.
"[The first win] was awesome," Vermont Coach Edz Sturans said. "After that I totally don't know what happened. We fell apart completely. We haven't done that all season."
Sturans was unable to put his finger on exactly whatcaused such a drastic change in his team.
"I have no idea what my team was thinking," Sturans said. "They just fell apart psychologically. They just weren't even getting the ball up. I'm not taking anything away from Dartmouth, though. They are just one hundred percent better than last year."
On the flip side, Dartmouth Coach Ann Marie Larese wondered just the opposite. For her, the question was what happened in the first game.
On Dartmouth's part the problem seemed to revolve around serving and overall concentration.
"It was the worst service game all year," Larese said. "We had huge mental lapses."
"We were a little bit out of our rhythm. We had a lot of trouble with our serving, which hasn't happened up until now," Captain Carmen Schmitt '97 said.
Despite Dartmouth's young team, the Big Green were able to put that first game behindthemand go on to win the match in the next three games.
"We outlasted them, and we scored points when we had to," Larese said. "We recovered and did some good things on defense."
"We did make one of our goals," Schmitt said. "We've been having trouble with the second game. This time we stepped up and won the second game of the match."
"Every time we play, we learn something different," Larese said. "The kids will learn they can come back after losing the first game. And we were able to hold them to under ten points in the last three games."
The win was slow coming for Dartmouth. Last season, in its first year as a varsity level team, Dartmouth fell to the Catamounts three times, 0-3, 1-3 and 1-3.
"There is always that rivalry and to finally get the win," Larese said. "We couldn't do that last year. I'm very happy to get the win tonight. Vermont is going to be a better team when we go up there."
Dartmouth has much time and many matches before its next encounter with Vermont, however. This weekend the team travels to New York to face Long Island University, St. Francis and Bucknell.
