This past weekend, the Case Western Reserve University volleyball team opened their UAA conference play, finishing with a 1-2 record in conference and moving to 8-11 overall.
For this series of UAA matches, the Spartans traveled to Atlanta—home of Emory University, the hosts of the first UAA round robin. They kicked off the weekend against Brandeis University in a five-set thriller.
CWRU came out strong in the opening set, building an eight-point lead and holding on for the win. In the second set, the Spartans trailed early but stormed back with a 9-2 run, maintaining control to take a 2-0 match lead. Brandeis responded in the third, pulling away with a late 7-2 run to stay alive. The Judges carried that momentum into the fourth, but the Spartans refused to fold. The score remained tied at nearly every turn, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 before Brandeis forced a decisive fifth set.
In the final frame, the Spartans struck first, jumping ahead 10-6. From there, back-to-back plays from fourth-year co-captains Kalli Wall and Amanda Ngo, a kill and a forced attacking error, sealed the victory and gave the Spartans their first conference win of the season.
Later in the day, the Spartans faced off against No. 25-ranked Carnegie Mellon University. The Tartans opened the match with a dominant first set, but CWRU responded in the second. With the score tied at 24, a clutch kill from Wall secured the set and evened the match at 1-1.
The Spartans carried that momentum into the third, racing out to an eight-point lead. However, Carnegie Mellon rallied, stringing together four straight points and ultimately stealing the set. In the fourth, CWRU once again started strong, but the Tartans battled back to tie the score at 16 before pulling ahead to close out both the set and the match.
In their final match of the weekend, the Spartans faced No. 9-ranked Emory University on the Eagles’ home court. CWRU kept the opening set close, trailing by just three points before Emory broke away with a 6-1 run to extend the lead to eight and close out the set. The Eagles carried that momentum into the second, controlling the pace and finishing on a 5-2 run to win by seven.
In the third, Emory once again jumped ahead early but the Spartans battled back. A kill from Wall knotted the score at 19, giving CWRU a chance to push the match further. Emory responded however by winning the final five points, securing their sweep.
With the first UAA round robin complete, the Spartans sit in sixth place in the conference. Wall continued her standout play, recording at least 10 kills in each of her last seven matches and in 15 of the team’s 19 contests this season. Meanwhile, Ngo is just one block shy of moving into eighth place in program history for career total blocks.
The Spartans will now shift back to non-conference action, traveling to Delaware, Ohio to face Denison University and Ohio Wesleyan University on Oct. 4. They will return to UAA play on Oct. 12 when they host the second round robin, featuring matchups against the University of Rochester and No. 5-ranked Washington University in St. Louis.