Pulling upset after upset and riding a suddenly fierce offense, the Washington University volleyball team’s improbable run in the NCAA tournament finally came to an end on their final night in Oshkosh, Wis.
After eking out a five-set win against University of Mary Washington in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament and plowing through Southwestern University in the semis, the Bears and their middle hitters were finally stymied by the Calvin College block.
Aaron Brezel | Student Life
Sophomore outside hitter Ifeoma Ufondu goes up for a kill in the Bears’ semifinal round match against Southwestern University during the NCAA Championship weekend in Oshkosh, Wis. The Bears lost in the championship game to Calvin College in straight sets on Saturday night.
No. 16 Wash. U. fell to the Knights in straight sets, 25-21, 25-21, 25-21, on Saturday night at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh’s Kolf Sports Center. During the postgame ceremony, Calvin hoisted the championship trophy while “We Are The Champions” played over the loudspeakers. The Bears, meanwhile, had to settle for a miracle run one stop short.
This could have been a game of immense pressure for members of the Red and Green as they looked to capture their program’s 11th national title but first in seven years. But, if you looked at the way the team joked around on the court before the match and how the bench jumped and cheered after almost every point, you could barely tell that this was even a playoff match, let alone what may have been the biggest game of their lives. Aside from some tense moments at the end of the third set and a few hard faces during the award ceremony, the atmosphere was practically jovial. The Bears had the look of a team playing with house money.
And why shouldn’t they? Few even thought they’d make it this far.
“A lot of people underestimated us at the beginning of the season,” head coach Vanessa Walby said. “And pretty much on any social media or any website you found, everybody was questioning what Wash. U. was about.”
Perhaps it was reactionary, but the Bears didn’t exactly begin the season like would-be national runner-ups. Through the first 10 games, the Bears limped to a 5-5 record, dropping winnable games against teams like DePauw University, University of La Verne and Illinois Wesleyan University. It was the Red and Green’s worst start to a season since 1999 but not an unsurprising one, considering the 19-woman roster included 15 freshmen and sophomores, very few of whom had ever seen extended playing time on the Wash. U. court.
It’s been a crescendo ever since, starting with two five-set upset victories against No. 1 California Lutheran University and No. 5 Juniata College and ending with a final joyous clash against Calvin. Just making it to the tournament’s final weekend, when so many more polished Bears teams from the recent past were cut down at the regional stage, was an accomplishment. But even still, the Bears kept going, kept fighting, kept winning.
“In previous years, we peaked more in the middle of our season, where this year we definitely struggled in the beginning, and now we’ve finally figured out what works for us, and we’re finally coming together as a team,” senior six-rotation player Rexi Sheredy said.
In the quarterfinal match Thursday, the Bears faced off against a No. 14 Mary Washington team that was, in so many statistical categories, their equal. On the strength of their middles, Wash. U. prevailed. Senior Caroline Dupont and sophomore Julianne Malek set career highs with 21 and 17 kills, respectively.
“Their middles…just…amazing,” Matt Troy, the head coach of the Eagles, said. “We haven’t run up against middles like that.”
The Bears went to the same well the next day, against No. 7 Southwestern, but this time, it was Malek alone who gave the signature performance. Malek, who had eight kills total before this season, collected 16 kills on 24 attempts with no errors—a 0.667 hitting percentage. She also added three and a half blocks to her credit.
Calvin represented a different kind of opponent entirely. Over the course of their 33-1 season, the Knights handedly swept University of Chicago, No. 22 Elmhurst College and No. 10 Juniata College. By comparison, the Bears went 1-1 against Chicago this year and were beaten in straight sets by Elmhurst, and it took five sets and a major upset for Wash. U. to beat Juniata. Calvin’s only loss this season came against No. 9 Hope College in a five-setter that went down to the final possession. But Calvin had also already swept Hope earlier in the year, making even that blemish an anomaly.
The Knights’ physical size was just as daunting as their pedigree, with six players 6’1’’ or taller on their roster, Wash. U. with only one.
“They’re big, but big doesn’t always mean that you’re fast or that [we] can’t open up other things,” Vanessa Walby said, in an interview the night before facing Calvin.
Like Walby suggested, despite their size, Calvin struggled in the blocking game heading into the weekend, with 1.69 blocks per set earning them a very pedestrian 124th rank in Division III.
That wasn’t the case Saturday.
“They did a lot of things right tonight that I haven’t seen them do in a lot of the film that we watched,” Walby said on Saturday. “They blocked really well tonight. They did a good job of zeroing in on a lot of our key players.”
What Calvin did better than both Mary Washington and Southwestern was use its block to neutralize Dupont and Malek. After swinging a combined .456 in the first two games of the weekend, the Knights held Wash. U.’s two middles to a .139 hitting percentage. Of the seven blocks Calvin tallied on Saturday, three came against Dupont and Malek, despite them taking up less than of a third of the Bears’ total attacks. While Calvin’s extra focus on the middle did open up lanes for senior right side hitter Amanda Palucki to register 11 kills and a .500 hitting percentage, without Dupont and Malek, the Bears lacked the firepower that could’ve put the Knights out of system and kept them on the defensive.
The night before the Calvin match, Walby commented that, “You live and die by your middles.”
She was right.
The Bears were held to a 0.193 hitting percentage, while the Knights swung at a 0.254 clip.
Between the second and third set, when it started to become apparent that the Bears might not have enough to beat Calvin, “Sweet Caroline” came on over the gym speakers. Even though the Bears were down two sets to zero, they all surrounded Caroline Dupont and sang and danced to the music.