Hanover, N.H. – The Fordham volleyball team cruised to a sweep over Hartford to begin the Dartmouth Invitational on Friday afternoon, defeating the Hawks 25-23, 25-14, 25-20. With the win, the Rams improve to 5-2 overall on the season, while Hartford falls to 4-3.
"The match was an excellent reflection of the focused clarity we've had all week in training," Head coach
Ian Choi said, "Unconditional support from coach to student-athlete and teammate to teammate as a team value really set the foundation to push these players of out their comfort zones this week. The process in obtaining the win really showed. It was probably the best I've ever seen this team execute a game plan and they had me smiling stupid all match."
The Rams were out-hit in the opening frame but took advantage of miscues and used timely rallies to win the set. A trio of attack errors and kills by
McKenna Lahr and
Kaitlin Morley gave the Rams a 21-18 lead and, after a pair of Hartford kills, a kill by
Joey Landeros, an ace by
Megan Brzozowski, and another attack error gave Fordham set point. The Hawks would get within one again but Lahr stopped it with a cross-court kill.
Fordham led wire-to-wire in the second set, starting with a block by
Elise Benjamin and
Olivia Fairchild. From 9-7 on, the Rams never trailed by less than five the rest of the way. The Rams looked to take control of the third set with a quarter of kills, three from Morley and one by
Aria De La Rosa, giving them a 16-11 advantage. The Hawks responded with seven straight points, including five Ram errors, but Fordham closed out emphatically from that point on. Down, 18-16, Morley and Landeros combined for a pair of kills followed by an attack error and a Lahr kill, making it, 20-18. Fordham's next four points came on either a kill or an ace from Morley or Lahr and Landeros smashed home her eighth kill of the match for the match winner.
Offensively, Four players tallied between eight and 10 kills, with Morley leading the way with the latter. Landeros enjoyed eight kills on 12 attempts with one error, good for a .583 percentage. Benjamin added five kills without an error on nine attempts to hit .556. Sharing setting duties,
Makaela Tanaka tallied 18 assists, while Brzozowski had 16, the duo adding four and five digs, respectively. Brzozowski also had a pair of aces. Defensively,
Morgan Williams finished with 20 digs, two shy of the three-frame school record that she's reached twice before. Lahr and Morley each had nine. There was a season-high four solo blocks, two coming from Benjamin and one apiece from De La Rosa and Lahr. Benjamin added four assists and Fairchild had three.
The Rams play Hofstra at 10:30 a.m. tomorrow morning and Dartmouth at 6:30 p.m.
