BY GENEVRA PITTMAN

In print | November 1, 2007

Don’t let the ultimate result, a five-set loss to Franklin and Marshall College, fool you — the Garnet volleyball team’s final match of the year on Saturday was a fine send-off for its three seniors and a positive finish to what has been a challenging season for the squad. After battling through injuries and sickness in the past few weeks, Swarthmore had its full team back on the court to face off against the Diplomats last weekend. F&M entered the game one spot above the Garnet in the conference rankings, with a 5-4 record to Swarthmore’s 4-5. But from the initial whistle, Swarthmore made itself look like the superior team in the matchup.

“Going into the game F&M was really not expecting us to be much of a challenge for them and we really shocked them in the first game,” Karen Berk ‘08 said. "Throughout the entire match it was really, really competitive. The level of play was much higher than we’ve seen for a lot of the season and I think we really rose to the occasion."

The Garnet took an early 11-3 lead in the first game and never looked back, cruising to a quick 30-22 win to take over the energy and momentum of the match. F&M bounced back in the second game, going up 6-2 before Swarthmore clawed back into the game with big kills from Jen Wang ’09 to earn a 11-11 tie. The game remained tense throughout, as the Garnet never let up on the offensive front, recording a match-high 17 kills in the game. With the game coming down to the wire, a double hit was called on Swarthmore to tie the game at 29-29. Wang recorded another kill to give the ball back to the Garnet, but F&M responded with an attack to keep the game knotted at 30-30. Katie Gold ’08 earned a side-out for Swarthmore with another kill, but the Garnet suffered from another double hit call, and Wang missed a kill to give F&M the win and tie up the match at one game apiece.

The loss was also a momentum shift, and the Garnet struggled to reclaim its initial energy as the Diplomats opened up another quick lead, 7-2, in the third game. Once again Swarthmore came back to earn a 15-15 tie midway through the game, but F&M snapped out of its daze and went on to get a convincing 30-22 win in the game and put the Garnet one game away from a loss.

But Swarthmore would not go down so easily. In a fourth game during which it recorded 14 kills and just five errors, the Garnet battled the Diplomats to the very end, keeping the game close throughout and getting a big kill from Berk on a 29-28 point to tie the match up again at 2-2. In the fifth and final game, the two teams battled early on to a 9-9 tie, with F&M earning a slight lead but Swarthmore using an ace by Wang and a kill by Johanna Bond ’10, recently returned from a wrist injury, to tie the score. The Diplomats scored the next three points to take control of the match, as they won the fifth game, 15-10. Despite the loss, Swarthmore did not leave the match feeling defeated.

“At the end we felt like we had played the best we could and that’s all that I asked of the team really,” Coach Harleigh Leach said. “I’m very proud of them for that.”

“That was probably, [of] the four years that the seniors have been here, the best we’ve played against them, so even thought it would have been nice to end the season .500, I kind of feel like I’m at peace with the way the season ended still,” Vanessa Wells ’08 said.

All three of the team’s seniors, Berk, Gold and Wells had kills in the double-digits for the Garnet, and Wang added a team-high 15 kills of her own. Those 15 were enough to give Wang a share of the team’s season kill record (319), and Erin Heaney ’09 had 19 digs to earn her sole possession of the season dig record in Swarthmore history with 492. Earning her own place in the history books, Berk has moved up to third on the all-time conference list for blocks with 448.

“This is my first senior class that every member was a significant member [of the team],” Leach said. “Karen Berk is the third-best blocker in conference history. Vanessa has grown so much as a player … [and] Katie Gold is just a great athlete, she’s such a team competitor. We’re really going to miss them.”

With the loss of three of its most powerful players, all of whom provide a dominating presence at the net, Swarthmore will no doubt have a difficult time replacing the seniors next season. Still, the younger players have shown that they can step up when the team needs them, as was the case when both Bond and Gold were out earlier in the season. Wells especially praised the play of Monica Joshi ’10, Sarah Lambert ’11 and Serra Kornfilt ’11.

“Even though we had unfortunate injuries or illness, during those times when we didn’t have Jo on the court or Katie on the court … all three of them really stepped up to the plate, they really impressed the rest of the team.”

As the team reflected on its season, which ended with a 9-18 record, 4-6 in the conference, Leach can see improvement in the way the squad has faced off against top-level competition this year. “This is really our toughest schedule we’ve played,” she said. “went by so fast. It’s just sad because I’m not ready for the season to be over and I know the team’s not ready for the season to be over.”

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