The women's volleyball team ended its week on a positive note with Tuesday's dramatic 3-0 sweep against the University of New England.
The victory was especially welcome for the team after a series of difficult games during last weekend's Tufts Invitational, where the Polar Bears' Friday success against Wellesley was followed by successive losses to Tufts, MIT and NYU.
For the Polar Bears, the most significant aspect of the UNE win was the fact that it came in just three sets.
These were not easy sets to take; starting with the tight score of 26-24 into a second set of 25-21, the Nor'Easters proved to the team that they were up for a fight. However, the Polar Bears sealed the deal with a definitive third tally of 25-14.
Co-captain Jenna Diggs '10 said, "Everyone was so excited about accomplishing our goal of winning in three games for the first time this season."
The dominant set results were not the only impressive statistics to emerge from the team's faceoff with UNE. Throughout the game, five separate Polar Bear players contributed six or more kills to the victory.
Amongst these players were first years Victoria Edelman with 11 and Melissa Haskell with 10, proving yet again the impressive strength of the team's underclassmen. Stephanie Bond '13 also posted 14 assists in just the first set, before Diggs substituted into the game to contribute 23 in the second and third.
Further key offensive moves included seven kills from Kristin Hanczor '12, six from Stephanie Drumright '11, and nine from Co-captain Gillian Page '10. On the defensive end, libero Jillian Berkman '11 notched a match-high 15 digs.
Coming out of the UNE match and the prior weekend matches, Page had more to be proud of than these nine kills.
Though Bowdoin struggled at the MIT Invitational on Friday, the outside hitter did score the final kills that she needed to break the previous Bowdoin record for them.
Having reached 1,024 total career kills after matches against Wellesley and Tufts, Page now stands as only the second Polar Bear ever to have surpassed 1,000 kills.
Though Page led the Polar Bears to an initial 3-2 victory over a strong Wellesley team, the later 0-3 match against Tufts, combined with Saturday's respective 2-3 and 0-3 defeats against MIT and NYU respectively, meant they left the MIT series with an overall record of 1-3.
The trend with both of these weekend matches seemed to be that although the Polar Bear players came on strong in the first matches of the day, taking both Wellesley and MIT to five sets, they lost stamina for both of the second matches.
Gina Lonati '12 put a positive spin of the tournament results.
"We might have only had one true success score-wise, but I think there were small successes to be noted in each of our losses as well," she said.
Examples of Lonati's small but significant successes during the tournament came in the form of continuously strong individual play.
Page led the Bowdoin team on Friday with 13 kills and six aces against Wellesley alongside nine kills and 20 digs against the Tufts Jumbos.
Bond posted 44 assists against Wellesley to support Page. Hanczor's and Haskell's respective 10 and 11 kills also added to the effort. Haskell also contributed a team-high of 20 digs.
On Saturday, Hanczor and Haskell were again effective with 11 and 10 kills off of Bond's 33 assists.
Both of these players branched into separate statistics, as well; Hanczor with six blocks and Haskell with 18 digs.
Though Hanczor was again notable in the final match against NYU, neither her nine kills nor Berkman's 16 digs could bring Bowdoin to victory.
"The biggest challenge for us this weekend will be serving tough and consistently, and serving the weakest players on the opposing team," Diggs said.
The team looks forward to meeting this challenge as it hosts the Midcoast Classic at home this weekend.
On the agenda for the Bears are Friday's 6 p.m. against Emerson and 8 p.m. against Worcester St. On Saturday, they face-off Mount Holyoke at 11 a.m. and Rivier at 1:30 p.m.