CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The No. 4 ranked Harvard women's volleyball team (15-8, 8-6 Ivy) will head to New Haven, Conn. to face No. 1 Yale on Friday, November 17 at 7 p.m. in the Ivy League Women's Volleyball Tournament semifinals. The match will be streamed on ESPN+ and tickets will be available for purchase.
Harvard clinched their spot in the Tournament with a sweep over Penn last Friday and secured the number four spot after falling to Princeton on Saturday. The Crimson will be making their first appearance in the four-team Ivy League Tournament since the tournament began in 2022. With a win on Friday night, Harvard will advance to the Ivy League Championship match on Saturday, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. All matches will be held in the John J. Lee Amphitheater on Yale's campus.
What to Know
• Head Coach Jennifer Weiss has entered her 30th season at the helm of the Crimson program. She has added Christina Cornelius '18 as an assistant coach, making this the first time a former Harvard women's volleyball player has returned as a coach for the program. Additionally, Henry Yip joined the coaching staff as a graduate of UMass Boston in 2019.
•The team has added a talented class of five first-years in Amelie Lima, Ali Farquhar, Yvette Easton, Ryleigh Patterson and Cagla Bayraktar. Patterson has already begun to make her mark, winning Ivy League Rookie of the Week three times for the weeks of Sept. 11, Oct. 9 and Oct. 23.
• Harvard was ranked 5th in the Ivy League preseason poll but has moved up to 4th to cement their spot in the Ivy League Tournament with an 8-6 record.
• In the 2023 season, the Crimson had their best start in history through the first 14 matches, starting the season 11-3.
• Ashley Wang has made history for the Crimson as she was the first to ever post two triple-doubles in one day, opening the season with trople-doubles against UNH and Holy Cross at the Harvard Invitational. She also scored 9 aces against UNH, a mark that still leads the NCAA in aces in a 4-set match.
• Wang has scored 7 triple-doubles this season, which currently ties the Harvard record for triple-doubles in one season.
• The Harvard team is ranked third in the NCAA in team blocks over a 5-set match from the Crimson's 3-2 win over Dartmouth, where Harvard put up 23 blocks.
• The Crimson lead the Ivy League in blocks, having made 231 total over 23 matches, averaging 2.72 blocks per set. They are ranked third in solo blocks with 53 but are first in block assists with 356. In Ivy League matches, the top two contests with the most blocks are both from the Crimson, with their 23 blocks against Dartmouth and their 19 blocks against Princeton.
• Ashley Wang and Rocky Aguirre both recently surpassed 1000 career assists, as Wang hit the mark on Oct. 27 in a five-set match against Cornell and Aguirre passed the benchmark on Nov. 4 against Yale. Aguirre is a junior and will look to climb up the record book charts in assists throughout her senior year with the Crimson.
• Harvard has won the Ivy League title four times in program history, three of those coming as ties with at least one other program. The Crimson's one outright win came in 1997 when Harvard went 25-9, 7-0 Ivy. This will be Harvard's first appearance in the Ivy League Tournament since the four-team tournament started in 2022.
• Harvard trials Yale 27-50 in the all time series, trails Princeton 17-60 and trails Brown 39-44. This season, the Crimson fell to Yale twice and split matches between Brown and Princeton.
• In the Crimson's first contest on the road at Yale, Harvard was swept by the Bulldogs, 3-0. At home, Harvard had an explosive first set, going up 1-0 against Yale after winning the set 25-14. From there, Yale won the next three sets and therefore the match 3-1.
