Hannah Burton
Staff Writer
The women’s volleyball team continued its winning streak with its 10th conference victory, defeating the Chapman Panthers, 3-1, Saturday at Frantz Athletic Court.
La Verne is now 19-4 overall and 10-2 in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Sophomore outside hitter Delaney Lynch, senior middle back Kelsi Robinson, sophomore libero Kristen Sanchez and senior setter Tiffany Mancuso led the team.
In the first set, both teams closely followed each other.
La Verne, winning 25-21, had a total of 10 kills, just below Chapman’s 13.
“It was really successful. We were really slow in the beginning but then we picked it up at the end,” Mancuso said. “We knew we wanted to beat them; we’ve been waiting for this game since they beat us.”
Head coach Jenna Panatier said that though the Panthers have a good blocking team, the Leopards were able to take care of business.
In set two, La Verne was able to continue its success, winning 25-20.
With 13 kills and two service aces by Mancuso and sophomore libero Sarah Yauchzee, the Leopards maintained their momentum.
However, in the third set the Leopards began to fall, losing 25-21.
“It was just almost like we were a step behind the ball,” Mancuso said. “The ball would be hit and then we’d move, rather than meeting the ball there, so once we figured that out we did really well.”
The team had seven errors compared to Chapman’s four.
“We were streaky,” Panatier said. “We do much better when we focus on taking care of the little things and I think that in game three we lost our focus a little bit, but they did a terrific job of coming back in the fourth game and staying on target.”
In the final set, the Leopards came back strong with the first eight points of the game in their favor.
Mancuso had eight service aces and 37 of the teams 41 assists.
Robinson, Lynch and junior outside hitter Marisa Rojo had a combined 31 kills.
“We didn’t let them get on runs like we did the last time we played them, we didn’t dig ourselves in as many holes as we did before,” Robinson said. “We knew what to do and we took care of business.”
The team earned 14 aces and had a hitting percentage of .180.
Sanchez and Mancuso racked up 23 of the team’s 50 total digs.
“I think their resiliency was really good this game. They could have easily let it go to five and they didn’t,” Panatier said.
The Leopards beat No. 2 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 3-2, on Tuesday.
The team will next face the Occidental Tigers at 7 p.m. Friday at Frantz Athletic Pavilion.
Hannah Burton can be reached at hannah.burton@laverne.edu.
