WILLIAMSBURG - The William and Mary volleyball team opened the conference season Friday night with a hard-fought 3-1 victory over Hofstra. With the win, the Tribe improves to 7-6 on the season and 1-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association, while Hofstra falls to 6-12, 0-1 in the league. The win makes the College the first school in CAA history to reach 150 regular-season conference victories.

Box Score

The Tribe's victory was paced by senior Erin Skipper (Yorktown, Va.), who had 19 kills on a .356 attack, and added 10 digs for her third double-double of the season. Skipper also had a hand in a pair of blocks, surpassing 200 total blocks in her career, and is only one kill shy of 1,200 in her three-plus years. Classmates Ginny Bray (Cary, N.C.) and Cassie Crumal (Castle Rock, Colo.) also starred in the match. Bray collected six kills and a match-high seven blocks, while Crumal had 40 assists, nine digs, and tied her career-high with five blocks.

Other notables included freshman Celine Alasomuka (Centreville, Va.), who also tied a career-high with 20 digs while adding two assists and two aces. Junior Lindsay Kresch (Moon Township, Pa.) had eight kills and five digs, and sophomore Gina Lang (Valparaiso, Ind.) came on in the final two sets to record five kills, four digs, and two blocks (including her first-ever solo block). Sophomore Delaney Gordon (Walnut Creek, Calif.) earned the start in the back row, and collected 10 digs on the night.

The Tribe came out firing in the first set, and quickly jumped out to a 7-3 lead on a block that involved Crumal, Bray, and freshman Alexandra Ciaccio (Houston, Texas). Hofstra would tie the set at 8-8, but a kill by Skipper set W&M off onto a 6-2 run. The Tribe was able to maintain that cushion for much the remainder of the set, until the Pride closed to within one at 21-20 and again at 22-21. Skipper and Kresch put down a pair of kills to lift W&M to set point, and sophomore Shaylin O'Connell (Leesburg, Va.) hammered down an over-pass on the ensuing serve to finish things off. Skipper finished with seven kills in the set, while Crumal had 11 assists and Bray three blocks.

Hofstra would gain one back in the second set, however, taking control with a 6-0 run earlier and hold off the Tribe en route to a 25-21 win of their own. Coming out the break, control reverted to the College with a 6-1 run to open the third set. The final three points in the set came on a succession of blocks, and W&M was able to rid that momentum and never let Hofstra get closer than three or four points the rest of the way. Interestingly, the set was the worst of the night for W&M with just eight kills and .069 attack, but the final score ended up being the largest of night (25-17), helped along by 14 attack errors on the part of the Pride and five blocks from the Tribe. After that initial run the Tribe was content to build it's lead through small, two- and three-point streaks, and finished the set on a four-point run punctuated by a block by Skipper and junior Anne Dorff (Kent, Ohio).

In the fourth and final set W&M took the lead from the gun with a 3-0 start, and never relinquished control in what was the tightest stanza of the night. Two- and three-point jags allowed the Tribe build its lead from one at 7-6 to as many as seven at 18-11 on a kill by Dorff, before Hofstra rattled off a 9-3 run of its own to close the set down to one again, at 21-20. The Tribe responded to the challenge with three points in a row to reach match point, the last on its 10th block of the night (from Dorff and Kresch). The Pride responded in turn, and reeled off three points of their own to put the Kaplan Arena crowd on its feet with the match rested on a single point, 24-23 in favor of W&M. Hofstra's Kylee Maneja served out the point, and on the fourth rally the Pride's Marina Markovic hammered an attack at Alasomuka who sprawled out for her 20th dig of the match. The ball rose back over the net to give Hofstra another chance, but the visitors couldn't sort out who would get the first touch fast enough and the ball fell untouched to the court, ending the match and giving Alasomuka her only kill of the evening.

William and Mary returns to action on Saturday night, hosting Northeastern at 7 p.m. The Huskies also opened their conference season with a victory on Friday, beating VCU 3-0 on the road. W&M will be attempting to break its school attendance record at the match.