Women's Volleyball 8/26/2024 10:27:00 AM

Volleyball goes 3-1 at Opening Weekend Tournament

Box Score 1 | Box Score 2 | Box Score 3 | Box Score 4

Rockford, IL: Harper Volleyball traveled to the Opening Weekend Tournament (OWT) at the UW Health Factory in Rockford, IL for a two day tournament on Friday and Saturday. This is the largest 2-year college tournament in the country.

Harper won three matches, and lost just one match, against very tough opponents.

Friday, Aug 23, 11:00 AM
Harper College defeated Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC) in a close 5-set match
17-25, 25-22, 25-13, 17-25, 15-13 – Instant Classic
It didn't take long for the season to start, this first match of the year became an "instant classic!"

In the first set, after the score was tied at 8-8, Harper Volleyball fell behind 9-15, and 11-19 on the way to a 17-25 loss.

In the second set, libero Abby Major served Harper to a 7-1 lead. Harper Volleyball maintained that lead 15-8, 17-12, 18-15; Harper Volleyball's lead slipped to 20-19, but Harper Volleyball held at 23-21 to win 25-22. The match is now tied 1-1. Morgan Krieter had 4 kills in this set, Evie Mounts had 3 kills. Major was 9-9 serving with 4 digs.

In the third set, Harper raced to a 14-3 lead, extended to 21-6, 22-9 and won 25-13 giving away some late momentum in this set. Mounts had 6 kills, and Lauren Ahlstedt added 3 more. Libero Major added 9 digs in this set.

So, naturally as the laws of volleyball predict, Harper Volleyball fell behind 2-6, and 4-10, and just couldn't close the gap, 7-18, 12-20 until a 17-25 loss would tie the match at 2 sets each to set up a deciding set 5.

In set 5, there were ties at 1-1 and 3-3. Harper took a strong 7-3 lead. Harper pushed to 9-5, but Southwestern Illinois (SWIC) tied the score at 10-10, 11-11, 12-12 AND 13-13. Harper won the last 2 points in dramatic fashion winning 15-13. The last hit was a bomb from Harper player of the week nominee Mounts tooling the outside block of SWIC for the win. Krieter had 2 crucial highlight film blocks in this set; Maya Sokolowski had 3 kills and a block. Harper had 20 digs in this last set, with libero Major leading the way with 5 of them.

Friday, Aug 23, 3:00 PM
Harper College defeated Spoon River
25-18, 25-21, 24-26, 27-25
This match started out the right way, with Harper winning the first set. The score was tied 10-10. At that point, Harper extended to 12-10 and 18-14 on the way to a 25-18 win. Mounts had 6 kills, and Ahlstedt had 4 kills. Setter Phoebe Kim had 5 digs.

The second set was closer… Harper had leads of 3-2, 4-3, and extended to 9-5 and 13-7. But Spoon River closed the gap to 18-15 and 20-20. Harper took a 23-20 lead and closed it out for a 25-21 win. Mounts and Sokolowski each had 5 kills in this set. Kim had 14 assists and 4 more digs.

The third set was close, close, close! Harper fell behind early 4-8 and 8-12, but closed to a 12-12 tie. Then after a 14-14 tie, Harper fell behind again 14-18. Harper tied the score back up at 18-18 and look a commanding 22-19 lead, and then another 23-20 lead, but this time saw that lead evaporate to 23-23, 24-24 and 25-25 before losing 25-27, setting up a 4th set. Mounts had another 6 kills, Taylor Coutts, playing back row added 2 kills, and Sokolowski and Ahlstedt each added 2 kills. On defense, Major had 12 digs, and setter Kim added 7 digs to go with her 11 assists.

The last set saw 11 tie scores! 4-4, 5-5, 7-7, 8-8, 12-12, 13-13, 17-17, 21-21, 23-23, 24-24 and 25-25, before Harper eeeeked out the last 2 points to win the set 27-25 and the match. Setter Coutts had 13 assists; Sokolowski led Harper with 4 kills, Krieter added 3 kills of her own.

For the match Mounts had 19 kills and 13 digs, Krieter had 11 kills, Ahlstedt had 10 kills. Kim ended with 49 assists and 13 digs and was 23-24 serving. Major had 23 digs, was 18-19 serving with 2 aces; and Kaylee Obrzut added 15 digs, and was 16-17 serving with an ace.

These 2 teams play each other again at Rock Valley in a couple weeks!

Saturday, Aug 24, 8:00 AM
Harper College defeated Montcalm
25-14, 25-6, 25-17
This was an early Saturday morning contest. Harper started out 4-0 on Obrzut's serves, but Montcalm tied the score up at 4-4 and 6-6, before Harper took an 11-8 and another 13-10 lead behind some more Obrzut serves and won 25-14.

Set 2 was almost perfection in motion, Harper Volleyball stormed out to an 8-2 lead, then 18-5 and won 25-6. This was a glimpse at how good Harper Volleyball can look when everything goes right. Mira Tchohadjieva was 4-4 hitting out of the middle, which was nice to see.

In the final set, Montcalm played better and Harper Volleyball fell behind 5-10, and struggled to close the gap… 6-12, and 8-13. But finally Major got loose with a bunch of serves in a row and Harper led 16-14 on the way to a 25-17 win. Mounts had 6 kills, and Sokolowski added 4 kills.

For the match, Major was 16-16 serving with 6 aces, and Kim was 14-14 serving.

Saturday, Aug 24, 12:00 PM
Harper College lost to #20 Lansing
22-25, 18-25, 13-25
Lansing is a superb D2 team, ranked #20 in the preseason poll. Lansing played like that in this match.

In the first set, there were ties at 4-4, 11-11, and 15-15. This was a match between two hard-hitting heavyweight volleyball teams. But Lansing pulled ahead 16-20, before Harper tied the score back up at 21-21, but Harper volleyball let too many Lansing smashed land at the end of this match at 22-25.

In the second set, Lansing's strong serving caused a 4-4 match to turn into a 12-17 problem for Harper on the way to an 18-25 loss for Harper.

In the third set, Harper fell behind 0-4, 6-12, 9-15 on the way to a 13-25 loss.

This excellent Lansing team just simply had too many serving and hitting weapons behind terrific setting and defense. Harper just didn't have enough to defeat this strong team.

For the weekend Harper had a fantastic showing, winning 3 of 4 matches against some very strong competition. No doubt these teams helped Harper Volleyball improve this weekend, which is the whole point of playing these tough teams.

This week the Hawks play at Triton on Tuesday and at Kankakee for the Kankakee Tri on Friday.

Print Friendly Version

Players Mentioned

#2 Abby Major: LIB; 5' 8"; Sophomore

#24 Maya Sokolowski: MH; 6' 0"; Sophomore

#30 Kaylee Obrzut: LIB; 5' 5"; Sophomore

#1 Taylor Coutts: S; 5' 8"; Freshman

#4 Lauren Ahlstedt: OH; 5' 11"; Freshman

#5 Mira Tchohadjieva: MH; 6' 0"; Freshman

#11 Morgan Krieter: OH; 6' 0"; Freshman

#13 Evie Mounts: OH; 6' 0"; Freshman

#99 Phoebe Kim: S; 5' 7"; Freshman

Players Mentioned

#2 Abby Major
: 5' 8"; Sophomore
: LIB

#24 Maya Sokolowski
: 6' 0"; Sophomore
: MH

#30 Kaylee Obrzut
: 5' 5"; Sophomore
: LIB

#1 Taylor Coutts
: 5' 8"; Freshman
: S

#4 Lauren Ahlstedt
: 5' 11"; Freshman
: OH

#5 Mira Tchohadjieva
: 6' 0"; Freshman
: MH

#11 Morgan Krieter
: 6' 0"; Freshman
: OH

#13 Evie Mounts
: 6' 0"; Freshman
: OH

#99 Phoebe Kim
: 5' 7"; Freshman
: S