Keene State Women’s Volleyball took a heavy fall to the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth (UMD) in a 3-0 loss last Saturday.
Olivia Seutter, on the UMass-Dartmouth team, gave the Owls a tough competition with five more kills than KSC had as a team. UMD is the defending Little East Tournament champions who won the series for a second time and the third in five tries after not beating KSC since 2004.
The Owls struggled with UMD’s strong offense, attacking with the hitting of .458 and 51 kills to just seven errors. KSC was only able to score consecutive points against the Corsairs four times.
To start off the first set, UMD scored seven of the first 10 points. With the Corsairs having the upper hand, the Owls were never able to find a solution. UMass was quickly up 14-5 with an opening block by Gigi Stake. Kaitlyn Cicerone was able to get consecutive kills for KSC, but UMD came back and scored eleven of the twelve points left. The first set was quickly tied up with a score of 8-25, a heavy loss for the Owls.
In the second set, the Corsairs again scored the first seven of 10 points and were leading Keene by 14-6 with a kill by Suetter. After a block by Molly Wetherbee and a kill by Alexis Small, KSC was within 15-9. UMD came back and ended on a 10-2 surge, taking 2-0 lead in the match.
Overall in the first and second set, KSC had 10 kills and six errors while UMass Dartmouth had 17 spikes in the first set and 18 in the second. UMass did not hit anything worse than a .438 while the Owl’s best markup was .111.
In the third set the Owls called an early timeout after UMD took a quick 8-2 lead. After the timeout, UMass came out and scored another seven points. The score was 18-3 before KSC’s Jordyn Mik got a kill. The stop on the Corsairs points did not stop and instead, they quickly took the set on a KSC service error. Keene State took a heavy loss from UMass Dartmouth.
Stephanie Olah and Wetherbee combined for eight kills and one error, but the rest of the team combined totaled six kills. KSC won the NCAA championship in 2022 but is 5-7 in the conference since.
Olivia Casale can be contacted at
ocasale@kscequinox.com
