The William and Mary volleyball team opened the 2011 season with a bang Saturday night, downing Presbyterian 3-2 on the road in an extremely hard-fought match. The Tribe improves to 1-0, while the Blue Hose are 0-1.
The match featured 41 ties and 22 lead changes, and four freshman starters for W&M, but the Tribe was able to prevail thanks to every player stepping up and contributing mightily. Leading the way was freshman Manon Murray (Greensboro, N.C.), who had a double-double of 16 kills and 11 digs in her collegiate debut. Classmate Carolina Rivas (Orlando, Fla.) also earned a start, and had 18 assists and seven digs in three sets.
Joining Murray with double-digit points for the Tribe were a pair of redshirt-freshmen. Picking up where she left off on last year's opening weekend, Paulette Grand Pre (Laguna Beach, Calif.) had 10 kills and six digs while hitting .364. Monika Stanciauskas (Wheaton, Ill.), making her collegiate debut, had eight kills on a .333 attack and added a match-high four blocks.
Other notables included sophomore libero Celine Alasomuka (Centreville, Va.), with 18 digs, four assists, and a pair of service aces, as well as junior setter Molly Krull (Raleigh, N.C.), who nearly had a double-double of 18 assists and nine digs. Freshman Liz Brown (Ellicott City, Md.) had six kills and a .250 attack in her first college appearance.
The night's first set had an astonishing 16 ties and 10 lead changes, but the College came away with the win and early lead after closing the set on a 6-1 run to win 25-21. Capitalizing on two errors by the home team to take the lead for the final time, 21-20, the Tribe picked up a huge block from Stanciauskas and Grand Pre to force a timeout, and came out on the other side with another point from an unforced error. After trading two more miscues, Grand Pre finished things off with a kill from Stanciauskas to claim the set.
Presbyterian bounced back to claim the second set 25-23, and the third as well at 25-17, but W&M gutted out a 26-24 victory in the fourth to force a final tiebreaker. Midway through the fourth, two kills and two blocks from Stanciauskas powered the Tribe on a 10-3 tear, and the teams traded small runs after that up to a tie at 24-24. Brown for W&M, and Allison Brown for Presbyterian, traded kills to reach the stalemate, but it was the Blue Hose that couldn't handle the pressure of closing things out and the Tribe was able to claim the final two points.
In the fifth, the teams saw nine more ties and five more lead changes, but the Tribe were better conditioned to fight through to the end. Down a point, 11-10, Murray scored her 16th and final kill on a feed from Krull, but was matched immediately but Presbyterian's final point to retake the lead, 12-11. On the very next point, Brown soared in to re-knot the match, and put the service into the hands of Murray. The freshman was able to induce first one error, and after Grand Pre put down her 10th kill of the night, Murray was able to draw out another error from the opponents to seal the win, 15-12.
William and Mary continues its weekend Sunday in Boone, North Carolina, with a pair of matches at Appalachian State. First, the Tribe will take on Kennesaw State at 10 a.m., followed by an appointment with the Mountaineers at 3 p.m.
