The four losses of the women's volleyball team at the Wild West Tournament last weekend can be a misleading statistic. Though it accurately portrays a tournament without a Polar Bear victory, it does not account for the anomalous level of difficulty the team faced in its matches and the ways this level of difficulty benefited Bowdoin.
The Wild West Tournament took place at California State University-East Bay and set Bowdoin against the host school as well as against California Lutheran, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Mt. St. Joseph. NCAA currently ranks East Bay, Lutheran, and St. Joseph in the top 25 in collegiate women's volleyball.
"[The tournament was] an opportunity to compete at a level we just haven't seen before," said Skye Lawrence '10.
"Our coach purposefully scheduled these matches right before our last six NESCAC matches so that we could learn from our mistakes against some of the toughest teams in the nation, and subsequently use this knowledge to prepare for our upcoming matches," said Jenna Diggs '10.
The tournament opened on Saturday with a morning match versus No. 18 Lutheran and an evening match against Santa Cruz. Though Lutheran shut out Bowdoin 3-0, the Polar Bears held their own against the Banana Slugs in a 3-2 face-off with competitive set scores of 25-21, 23-25, 25-23, 23-25, and 15-10.
"That UC-Santa Cruz game just slipped by us!" Head Coach Karen Corey said.
Both the Santa Cruz and the Lutheran matches had their highlights. Gillian Page '10 and Diggs led against Lutheran, Page with five blocks and Diggs with 10 assists. Against Santa Cruz, Page contributed an additional 15 kills and Diggs a flexible 43 assists, 34 digs, and four blocks. Kristin Hanczor '12 was also active with 14 kills and five blocks.
On Sunday afternoon, ninth-ranked East Bay shut out Bowdoin 3-0. In a more successful evening match against No. 25 ranked Mt. St. Joseph, the Polar Bears returned from a weak start at 25-12 to snatch the second set at 22-25. It was not enough, however, to overcome the Lions' subsequent efforts of 25-18 and 25-16 as they ultimately defeated the Bears at a score of 3-1.
Page and Diggs were again effective in both the East Bay and St. Joseph fronts.
Against East Bay, Page added 9 kills and 17 digs; against St. Joseph, she led with 9 kills and 4 solo blocks. Her offensive endeavors built off of Diggs's 19 assists against East Bay and 30 against St. Joseph. In the East Bay match, Jillian Berkman '11 and Skye Lawrence '10 posted an additional 23 digs and 20 digs with 3 aces, respectively.
Diggs summarized the tournament optimistically.
"We went 0-4 this past weekend in California, but this record did no justice to our tremendous improvement as a team. In future weekends we will be serving tougher, passing better, and hitting harder than we ever have in the past," she said.
Gina Lonati '12 also noted the importance of the Polar Bear bonding while on the California trip.
"We grew even closer as a team," she said. "We have a great, cohesive group of girls that all individually contribute so much; I know that going into this weekend's tournament at Trinity we will do well."
The Polar Bears will also be able to draw from their victorious 3-0 encounter with Bates on October 8. Coach Corey called the 25-21, 25-19, and 27-25 match "exceptional" and "the best volleyball we played all year."
Bowdoin kicks off the Trinity tournament at 8 p.m. Friday against Wesleyan, to be followed by Saturday matches against Trinity at 11 a.m. and Connecticut College at 4 p.m.