Volleyball 10/19/23
2
Oakton Community Col OAKTON C
3
Winner Harper College HARPER C
Oakton Community Col OAKTON C
2
Final
3
Harper College HARPER C
Winner
Set Scores
Team 1 2 3 4 5 F
Oakton Community Col OAKTON C 25 25 20 21 8 (2)
Harper College HARPER C 21 17 25 25 15 (3)

Game Recap: Women's Volleyball |

Harper Volleyball defeated Oakton

Harper Volleyball defeated Oakton 21-25, 17-25, 25-20, 25-21, 15-8
Thursday, October 19, 2023, at Harper College – SOPHOMORE NIGHT
Palatine, IL:  Thursday was Sophomore night. It is a bittersweet night.  We have played a lot of volleyball this year, and bonded well.  There were balloons, flowers, posters and photos…

Oakton and their 4 wins and 22 losses was the opponent.  Sounds easy… right?  Nope.  Harper College made it a challenge.  Three matches in 3 nights because of that gas leak last week…

In the first set, Harper fell behind instantly at 1-5, and continued to fade at 5-9 and 6-13, and 10-18.  With some nice serving from Asia Williams, Harper came close at 16-18, but continued to flounder and lost 21-25.  Taylor Knuth started out hot with 5 kills.  Jasmine Nitu led Harper with 5 digs playing outside hitter for a change.  Williams was 6-7 serving with 2 aces.

In the second set, Harper fell behind again at 5-9, then 12-15 on a terrific Abby Major dig and Knuth smash.  Harper finally tied the score at 16-16 and 17-17, but promptly lost the next 8 points in a row to lose 17-25.  Knuth stayed hot with 6 kills. 

Down 0-2 in sets, Harper took the opening lead 4-1 behind Cana Jones' serving. But Oakton tied the score at 7-7.  Harper took an 11-7 and 16-8 lead, this time behind Major's serves.  Harper extended to 19-12, fell back a bit at 22-17, but won 25-20.  This was an odd set as Harper only had 5 kills, but had 3 blocks in this set.  Jones was 4-5 serving with 3 aces. Ava Belluomini added 2 more aces.

Now down 1-2 in sets, Harper took a commanding 7-2 lead and extended to 14-5.  But after a missed serve an avalanche of errors caused Harper to lose 12 consecutive points and fell behind 14-17.  Harper finally tied the score at 19-19, and took a slim 21-19 lead and won 25-21, to save the match – so far.  Knuth led Harper with 4 more kills in this set.  Regina Anelli had 5 digs to lead Harper.  Knuth was 7-7 serving with 2 aces.  But the story was Major's 9 serves including an ace at the end of this set.

So, Harper Volleyball has been here before, in many 5-set matches prior to this one, 10 times before…  As usual, the score was tied at 1-1, 2-2 and 3-3… Harper took a slim 6-4, 7-5 and 8-5 lead at the switch.  On the "home side", Harper extended the lead to 11-6 and won 15-8.  Knuth put away 5 kills in this last deciding set for a match-high 23 kills.  Last night Knuth had a record tying 28 kills.  Pretty good 2-day total of 51 kills!  Major made some game saving highlight film digs with 5 in this deciding fifth set.  Jones was 3-3 serving with an ace in this 5th set.

Looks like 5-set matches are just in Harper Volleyball's DNA, this year.  Eleven times.

Our last play date this year is Saturday in a Tri-Match at Triton (10:00 a.m. v Triton and Noon against Olive-Harvey).  

 

Then next week the Region and District playoffs will occur (dates = TBD), with the hope of earning a trip to the NJCAA National Tournament.
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