CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Harvard Women's Volleyball team (6-1) has had one of their best starts in program history after a 3-0 victory over Merrimack on Thursday to start their weekend of competition against nearby opponents that will include Boston College and Providence in the following days. Harvard won the match in three sets of 25-20, 25-14 and 25-19.
The first set was the closest of the match, with Merrimack taking an early lead and forcing the Crimson to play catch-up to 10. After tying the game up, Harvard went on a four-point run to take control of the set and went on to take a 1-0 lead after a 25-20 set win.
The second set started off with an excellent performance at the net from the crimson as
Ariana White and
Ava Rauser put up four blocks to score four of the six first points. Harvard took a ten-point lead early in the set, and finished up 11, 25-14.
Merrimack scored the first three to start the third but it did not take long for Harvard to take over and begin to build up a lead with more kills and blocks. In what proved to be a slightly closer battle than the second set, Harvard went on to sweep the match after a 25-19 score in the third set.
Harvard Highlights
- Rauser led the Crimson in kills, scoring nine. She was followed by Katie Vorhies with eight and Nicole Prescott with seven.
- Ryleigh Patterson and Rauser were incredibly efficient at the net, both hitting .800 as Rauser scored nine kills off 11 attacks and Patterson had four kills off five attacks.
- Ashley Wang and Rocky Aguirre each had double-digit assists with 13 and 10, respectively.
- Seven different Crimson athletes scored an ace, led by Wang with three, Lindsey Zhang with two and Prescott, Patterson, Brynne Faltinsky, Hannah Nguyen and Aguirre with one each.
- Prescott was the team leader in digs with seven, followed by Wang and Aguirre with five each.
- Harvard was extremely dominant over the Warriors in blocks, out-blocking Merrimack 10-0 with 20 block assists.
- The Crimson move to 2-0 in the all-time series against Merrimack, bettering the 3-1 win from 2021 with a 3-0 win today.
- A 6-1 Harvard is on track to tie their best start in program history, when the team started the season 7-1 in 1984.
Up Next
Harvard will cross the river from the MAC to head to Chestnut Hill for a match at Boston College on Friday at 7 p.m. The game will be streamed on ACCNX.
