Women’s Volleyball Has a Winning Season

Home » Annandale, Headline, Off Campus, On Campus, Sports

24 December 2011 No Comment

The sophomores on the NOVA women's volleyball team were honored at the final home game on Oct. 27 in a match against Hagerstown Community College. Stephanie Quirk (psychology major), Monique Smith (biology), Elisavet Loukaidou (biology) and Samantha Bolte (business) accept flowers and gifts. Photo by Arch Scurlock.

Arch Scurlock
Sports Columnist

The Northern Virginia Community College women’s volleyball team, with the help of early-season successes, ended its 2011 season with a winning record at 13-12.

The team entered a busy October month of competition with a 7-2 record. After splitting its two matches in the three-team competition at the Annandale campus on Oct. 1, it traveled on Oct. 4 to Keyser, W.Va., to play the tough Potomac State College squad, where it dropped a three game to one match.

At a game Oct. 6 the team lost to another tough team, the Community College of Baltimore County-Catonsville, 3-0. A two-day competition over Oct. 8 and 9 in Hagerstown saw NOVA split four matches, including a second loss to Montgomery Community College-Rockville and a third time to Community College of Baltimore County-Catonsville, though closing the gap against Catonsville, losing only 25-27, 25-23, 20-25 and 25-27.

After one day off, NOVA hosted Trinity Washington University on Oct. 11 and beat them 3-0 for the second time this year to up their season record to 11-7. On Oct. 13 NOVA traveled to Columbia, Md., to play Howard Community College. Although NOVA had beaten them 3-0 less than a week earlier, this time Howard reversed the final result, winning 3-1.

On Oct. 18, NOVA played the tough Potomac State College Catamounts again, this time at the Annandale campus. The first game saw NOVA commit a number of errors as Potomac won easily 25-15. Game Two saw NOVA again not playing well as it got dumped 25-16.

Game Three, however, saw NOVA streak out to a 7-1 lead. Could they hold it to the end? Potomac slowly whittled away at the lead and edged it down to 11-7. Some good serving by NOVA’s Alanah Jones widened NOVA’s lead to 14-7.

NOVA still led 17-14 before Potomac scored three straight to tie for the first time 17-17. Potomac then scored three more on two NOVA errors and a spike before NOVA scored two to come back to within 19-20. A NOVA error stopped that streak as Potomac then widened the score to 24-20, finally winning 25-21. With the win Potomac increased its record to 19-2 while NOVA fell to 11-9.

Two days later on Oct. 20, NOVA hosted Frederick Community College of Maryland and beat them 25-10 and 25-17 in a shortened contest.

NOVA went back on the road for its next three matches. The first two were at Rockville on Oct. 22 as NOVA lost for the third time to Montgomery Community College-Rockville, but at least won a game 25-20. It then played a good Harford Community College (Md.) squad. The match stretched to five games as the first four games went 29-31, 25-16, 25-17 and 22-25.

NOVA then easily won 15-4 to increase its season record to 13-10 with two matches left, insuring a winning season record.

Next, on Oct. 25, it was off to Cumberland to play Allegany College of Maryland. NOVA had beaten them earlier 3-1, but this time Allegany shut out NOVA in three games.

Match 25 was against the strong Hagerstown Hawks at Annandale on Oct. 27. NOVA hoped to, if not win the match, then at least to win a game or two. Hagerstown came into the match having won its last 15 games in a row. Before the game, the four NOVA sophomores were honored for their play: Samantha Bolte, Monique Smith, Stephanie Quirk and Elisavet Loukaidou.

The first game saw NOVA streak out to an 8-0 lead, but the Hawks came back to 9-5. NOVA played near errorless volleyball as it held leads of 12-5, 13-8, 18-14 and 22-17. Hagerstown finally tied it at 24-all.

NOVA’s Monique Smith had two strong spikes, the second giving NOVA the lead at 26-25. NOVA was unable to capitalize on that lead, but at 27-26 a NOVA return twirled around on top of the net before falling back onto the NOVA side, depriving the team of the win. NOVA again held leads at 28-27 and 30-29 but finally fell to Hagerstown 32-20.
In the second game, NOVA errors helped doom it to a 25-13 defeat.

NOVA rallied for the third game, taking an early 6-1 lead. Hagerstown narrowed the lead, but NOVA held small leads all the way until the Hawks tied it at 15-15. Hagerstown then took leads of 19-15, 21-17 and 24-20. A NOVA point cut the lead to 24-21 and raised hopes for a comeback as NOVA regained the serve. However, the serve failed to get over the net, and hopes were quickly dashed as Hagerstown took the third game 25-21 and the match. Still, NOVA had given Hagerstown all they could handle for two of the three games.

With the win, Hagerstown’s record climbed to 22-7 while NOVA finished at 13-12.

“We had a great year with a small team. They hung in there well and did very, very good with each other,” related Coach Marcus Robinson after the match. “We played very well today. This was our last game, our last home game and sophomore night, so we were up for it.”