The Westmont women’s volleyball team won its first PacWest Conference match on Friday, beating Dominican of San Rafael in three sets. The scores were 25-19, 25-14, 25-18.
“I forget these things,” laughed coach Ruth McGolpin when asked about the significance of the win, “but luckily I came back to a couple texts reminding me what had just happened. That’s pretty cool. We’re stoked, and we hope there’s a lot more to come from a lot of our teams on campus.”
In the first set Westmont built a comfortable lead towards the middle of the game, with Dominican calling a timeout trailing 18-13. Out of the timeout, however, the Penguins scored three consecutive points to back within a pair, forcing McGolpin to call a timeout of her own.
The Penguins stayed within a pair at 19-17, but then, a kill from Alexis Dennick and a pair of kills from Sara Krueger allowed Westmont to rebuild their advantage to 22-17. Moments later, both Krueger and Dennick went up for a set-ending block, putting Westmont on the board first with a 25-19 win.
In set two the two teams traded the first eight points of the game to a 4-4 tie, but then, the Warriors took off. A kill from Jessie Terlizzi caused Dominican to call timeout trailing 8-4, but the run by the Warriors did not stop there. Out of the timeout, a pair of kills from Dennick and Terlizzi continued the run, and a block from Krueger and Dennick put the finishing touches on a game-changing seven-point swing to put the team up 11-4.
The lead continued to grow for the Warriors, who were up 23-14 before kills from Krueger and Terlizzi finished the 25-14 win.
The third set saw the Warriors never trail in the contest. Taylor Distelberg’s fourth kill of the night gave Westmont a 25-18 win.
“From the start to the end, we were on it tonight,” said McGolpin. “Our hitting percentage was fantastic tonight, our passing was spot on, and our serving was tough. We did not let up, and it was really good to see from these women.
“The team did a great job with traveling the same day from this distance. We did something a little different, and started our warm ups a little earlier. I think it actually helped get the ‘bus-legs’ out of us. It was a solid start and finish to the day with no let up at all.”
Individually, Minch led Westmont with 10 kills to go along with a .471 attack percentage, while Dennick hit .625 with six kills of her own. Defensively, Dennick also recorded five blocks, while Hashimoto and Ella Hosfeld each recorded six digs. Hosfeld also led the Warriors with 12 assists, while Shiner contributed with nine of her own.
The Warriors return to action on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, where they’ll take on Academy of Art at 2 p.m.