By Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
SPRINGFIELD – The Springfield College women’s volleyball team defeated Amherst College on Thursday night at Blake Arena. The win moves the Pride to 11-4.
Springfield started off the match on fire, jumping out to an early 8-3 lead after a handful of Amherst errors. The flat-footed beginning for her program led Mammoths head coach Val Jones to call an early timeout – a decision that proved to work almost immediately. The Mammoths quickly swung momentum in their favor, outscoring the Pride 8-4 and going up 12-11.
Springfield took control back, only to falter and let Amherst tie the set 24-24. Needing to win by two, both teams were stuck in a stalemate, until Blake Arena erupted as Emily Keaveney blocked any chance of the Mammoths taking back the lead, winning the first set 28-26.
Extra points aren’t new to the Pride, as head coach Moira Long stated that this was a scenario the team has been practicing for.
“We practice every scenario,” Long said. “We work on all different kinds of scoring. We call them fight or finish. You either have to fight to the victory or finish the set. We worked hard on that, for sure.”
Springfield started off the second set in similar fashion to the first, building a 7-3 lead and forcing Jones to call another early timeout for Amherst. However, the timeout didn’t wake her team up as it did in the first, as the Pride held onto this momentum for the entire set. The Mammoths were only able to muster 12 points in total, an utterly dominant set win for the Pride.
On the verge of being swept, Amherst wasn’t ready to back down yet. The Mammoths held off a third straight hot start for the Pride, but still trailed 13-11. Amherst scored three straight to take the lead by one, and took advantage of a handful of Springfield errors to go up 17-15. The Pride swiftly took the lead back after Maeve Voltz spiked the ball into the hands of a pack of Mammoth defenders. Springfield won the set 25-21 and completed the sweep after Jodi Saelua got the winning kill.
Tonight’s match meant a little more to one member of the Pride specifically, graduate libero Kristen DeLorenzo. Shy of two digs coming into tonight’s matchup of reaching 1,000 career digs, DeLorenzo accomplished this feat early on in the first, and went on to have 15 digs in the match. Reaching 1,000 digs has been a goal of DeLorenzo’s since she started playing.
“[Getting to 1,000 digs] definitely means a lot,” DeLorenzo said. “I couldn’t have done it without all my teammates and coaches. I have great blockers on this team and they always help me.”
DeLorenzo is in her first year at Springfield College, as she previously went to Stonehill College for four years. Long is pleased at not only how well DeLorenzo has been playing, but also how she is fitting into the roster.
“Kristen has done a really great job,” Long said. “Having been somewhere for four years and coming into our program, we do things a little differently. We have some pretty high expectations, and her level of play has always been high but I think she’s really met all of our expectations in the best way.”
DeLorenzo is from Syracuse, N.Y., which is a three and a half hour drive to Springfield College. Due to the distance, it’s tricky for her family to make every game. But with history on the line, tonight was an exception, as her family was in the stands cheering on with signs that read “1,000 DIGS! We love 14.” One of the family members holding a sign was her mom, Judy DeLorenzo, who was ecstatic to have the opportunity to see DeLorenzo surpass the milestone.
“It’s really exciting,” Judy said. “She’s been working her whole life to play collegiate volleyball and it’s one of the goals she’s had in her collegiate career. It’s very exciting to see her accomplish that.”
Springfield travels on Saturday to Scranton University to take on Catholic at 2:30 p.m. and host Scranton at 5 p.m.
Photo by Liam Reilly/The S