It didn't take long for the Tufts volleyball team to recapture the winning form that carried it to a record-breaking season last year.
Despite a hiccup that came in the form of a 3-2 loss to UMass Boston on Friday in their opening match of the season, the Jumbos were quick to recover and turn in a successful weekend. Tufts went on to dominate its next three matches, leaving the weekend's Brandeis Invitational with a 3-1 record and every reason to believe that this season will be as successful as the last.
On the second day of the invitational, the Jumbos took on host Brandeis in a morning matchup and registered a convincing 3-0 win to dispatch the Judges for the eighth consecutive time. After needing a few extra points to take the first game 27-25, the Jumbos cruised through the rest of the match, scoring 25-15 and 25-18 wins to complete the shutout.
Leading the way for Tufts was junior Caitlin Updike, who laid down 13 kills, while senior co-captain Brogie Helgeson followed closely with 12 of her own. The powerful duo accounted for half of the squad's 49 strikes on the match.
"We are looking even stronger this year and we've traded a lot of strengths for our weaknesses," Helgeson said. "We are a lot stronger offensively."
The driving force behind the Jumbos' potent offense was senior setter and co-captain Dena Feiger, who notched 45 assists — her high for the four tournament matches.
"It's good that we were able to get together as a team and mesh and work out the kinks," Feiger said.
In their afternoon contest, the Jumbos closed out the tournament with another overpowering performance, defeating Babson 3-1. After rolling their way through the first two sets 25-18 and 25-15, the Jumbos dropped their lone frame of the day 25-22 before bouncing back to take the final game 25-23 and secure the match.
Updike proved once again to be a force at the net, a promising sign after she was plagued by injuries last year. The junior landed 15 kills to bring her weekend total up to a team-leading 45. Freshman Kiersten Ellefsen landed 10 kills of her own, proving that the new class has much to offer.
"It's going to take a little while for [the freshmen] to get used to playing at the collegiate level, but they are going to be a big part of this team," Helgeson said.
On the defensive side, juniors Kelly Engelking and Nancy Shrodes led the way with 10 digs apiece, and three other players contributed five or more digs for Tufts.
The Jumbos' Friday evening match against Gordon was easily the least suspenseful of the weekend, as they dismantled the Fighting Scots 3-0 by successive comfortable margins of 25-15, 25-9 and 25-12.
Junior Dawson Joyce-Mendive paced the offense with nine kills, while Helgeson and junior Erica Lokken each added seven. Feiger proved more than effective setting up the attack, spreading 29 assists across the three-game match.
Though the Jumbos' first win of the season provided little drama of its own, it undoubtedly carried added weight after the squad was unable to close the deal in its season opener against UMass Boston. After dropping the first set 28-26, Tufts grabbed the next two, thanks largely to the offensive output of Joyce-Mendive, Helgeson and Updike, who collected 13, 12 and 12 kills, respectively, in the team's longest match of the tournament. But the Jumbos could not hold on, as the Beacons rallied to capture the fourth game 25-18 before going on to ice the win with a 15-8 victory in the final game of the match.
"[UMass Boston] had seven matches under their belts already, and obviously that was our first," Helgeson said.
The five-set loss was not how the Jumbos had hoped to kick off their 2009 campaign and was decidedly out of character for a squad that won its first four full-length matches in 2008 before finally losing to Springfield on Oct. 25. Moreover, the Jumbos appeared out of sync, compiling 27 hitting errors over the course of the match — a number that was by far their most of the tournament and was nearly double Tufts' 2008 average.
But despite the early setback, it seems that the Jumbos just needed some time on the court to shake the cobwebs, and they dropped only one more set over the remainder of the tournament. When all was said and done, the Jumbos' 3-1 record tied them with Williams for the second-best mark in the tournament behind UMass Boston (4-0).
"It does take a little time to get used to playing against a different team in the beginning," Feiger said. "But we played really well [against UMass] and got better as the match went on. Unfortunately, they were a really good team."
The biggest question that loomed prior to the season opener was how Tufts would respond to the loss of its four graduated seniors, who were all major contributors during last year's 29-4 program-best run. It helped that Feiger, who put up 156 assists over the weekend, was a holdover from last year as the starting setter and was already comfortable running the offense.
"It does feel a little different, but every single hitter — the returners and the freshmen — has worked really hard, and the returners have only gotten better," Feiger said of the Jumbos' offense.
The departure of defensive stalwart Natalie Goldstein, in particular, left a major hole to be filled. However, sophomore Audrey Kuan proved up to the task in her debut as starting libero, holding down the fort with a team-high 40 digs over the four-match tournament en route to earning a spot as the Jumbos' lone representative on the All-Tournament team.
"I don't try to compare myself [to Goldstein]," Kuan said. "I'll just take it as it comes."
Despite the early speed bump, the Jumbos seem to have settled into a rhythm rather quickly and are now preparing for tomorrow's 7 p.m. rematch with Gordon, which they have not dropped a set to since 2003.
"We just needed a little warm-up to connect with each other," Kuan said. "Now we found out what we're good at and what works for us."
