By Liam Reilly
@liampreilly852
SPRINGFIELD – The Springfield College women’s volleyball team bested Wellesley on Tuesday Night at Blake Arena. The win pushes the Pride to 15-5.
Springfield started the first set flat, trailing 4-1, but quickly took back the lead 11-7 after a pair of Riley Donahue aces. The Pride pushed the score to 21-13 after the senior duo of Donahue and Natalie Billet tagged a kill each. A strike by Billet ended the set in a win for Springfield, 25-16.
The second set saw the Blue and the Pride knotted at 10. Springfield jumped to a 16-14 lead that grew to 19-15 after Ahunna James sent the ball flying into Wellesley defenders. The Blue played close, but were unable to return a kill from Maeve Voltz to keep the set alive. The Pride claimed set two 25-21.
Looking to claim their second sweep in a row, the Pride leapt to a 7-1 lead to start the third. A Morgan Stafford ace put Springfield in the driver’s seat, leading 17-11, but two aces of its own helped Wellesley break the lead down to two. The Pride led 23-18, but the Blue scored five consecutive points to tie the set at 23. Once again Voltz hushed any chance Wellesley had of coming back by slamming a kill to win the set 25-23, along with completing the sweep.
Things were starting to look troublesome for the Pride in set three with Wellesley quickly cutting the lead down, until Springfield head coach Moira Long called her final timeout late. After the timeout, the Pride were able to push through and achieve victory. Long shared what was discussed in the timeout that helped the Pride finish the set in a win.
“We will have a really good pass here, we’re going to side out and then we’re going to finish it with our serve,” Long said.
Multiple times throughout the match, Long was heard telling junior middle blocker Maeve Voltz to attack the ball. Voltz did exactly so, and ended both sets two and three with a kill. The trust Voltz has established with Long is why she consistently dials up plays for Voltz at the end of sets.
“We know that we’re successful when we run our middle so it was just like ‘Be up and get the ball’ because she hadn’t had the ball in three plays,” Long said. “I thought she took a couple good swings that met. She wasn’t as terminal as Maeve would like but she took them out of system which is what we needed to do.”
Voltz noted that it was nice to know that her coach trusts her to help her teammates and score points. The Long Island native finished the night with seven kills, two of them coming in the biggest moments of the match. Voltz accredits her calm mentality when closing out games to a situational drill run during practice.
“In practice we do a drill called fight or finish where it’s 17-23 for the score,” Voltz said. “So we always practice those situations. For me, I was just focusing on executing and doing my job.”
Springfield will travel to Tufts University on Friday night to compete in their first game of the New England Challenge, and will take on Middlebury and Williams on Saturday in Cambridge, Mass.