CLAREMONT, Calif. – The University of Redlands Women's Volleyball team (7-4, 1-2 SCIAC) ended their two match losing streak with a 3-1 (26-24, 25-13, 16-25, 25-19) road victory over Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) Tuesday evening. This is their second-straight win against the Sagehens for the first time since 2009 when they beat the Sagehens in all three meetings that year.
The Bulldogs got off to a slow start in the first set trailing 8-2 with their lone points coming on kills by Emily Kitchin (Portland, OR) and Lily Kautai (San Mateo, CA).
A Kautai kill after falling behind by six started an 8-1 run for the Maroon and Grey that included kills from Emma Murphy (South Jordan, UT) and Esha Ball (Fresno, CA) giving UR their first lead, 10-9.
Following an ensuing three ties, Makenna Vanhofwegen (Buckeye, AZ) then assisted Kitchin, which reclaimed the lead again for the Bulldogs, 16-15, and was the first point of four unanswered.
Despite a four-point lead with only five points needed to win the opening set, the Sagehens came back and went ahead by two, 22-20, thanks to six in a row.
But in a set defined by extended scoring runs, Redlands had the final push. The stretch lasted the final eight points helping them hold off a set point and win the set, 26-24. Redlands won four of the final points with a kill from Murphy and capitalizing on two attacking errors by the Sagehens.
After an ultra-competitive first set, the Bulldogs opened the second frame winning eight of the first nine points as Lily Houston (Reno, NV) had the first kill before Kautai added three of her own. The rest of the set the closest the margin got was five as Redlands took an important 2-0 lead.
There were ten ties through 24 points in the third set, but over the final 17 the Sagehens won 13 of them and extend the game to a fourth set.
Each team won three unanswered points in the first six points in the fourth before PP won three in a row to take a 7-4 lead.
Still down three, 14-11, an attacking error on the Sagehens, a service ace by 'Ale'amaikalani Paiva (Honolulu, HI), and a Kautai kill tied the game for the first time since it was 4-4.
Those three points were the first of 14 scored by the Bulldogs who dominated the final 19 points by a margin of nine, 14-5, helping them win the set, 25-19, and the match, 3-1.
During that key run Hannah Hajnal (El Cerrito, CA) and Lilly Klinedinst (Lompoc, CA) both had aces and Redlands took advantage of seven P-P errors to win their first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) match of the season ahead of a match-up with a ranked team Friday.
Kautai had a third of the Bulldogs' 45 kills as she hit .417. Vanhofwegen had 21 assists and Hajnal added 14. Paiva had 26 digs and Kitchin had 17 in her most productive match of her career.
The upcoming ranked team for the Bulldogs is No. 17 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) who plays the Bulldogs inside Currier Gymnasium this Friday, October 3 at 7:00 p.m.
