For the second-straight year, the Harvard women’s volleyball team found itself one game away from reaching the NCAA Tournament for the first time in team history in late November.
Last season, the Crimson saw its dream go unrealized. In an Ivy League title tiebreaking game, Harvard dropped three straight sets to archrival Yale in front of a full capacity crowd at the Malkin Athletic Center in what would be its last contest of the season.
This season, the Crimson stood in the same spot—the Ancient Eight conference tiebreaker in the Malkin Athletic Center, this time against Princeton. After Harvard opened the contest by conceding its first set, the tiebreaker was starting to look more and more like last year’s heartbreaking defeat to the Bulldogs.
But this time, Harvard wouldn’t let the opportunity slip through its fingers.
Powered by double-digit kills from junior setter Corie Bain and senior outside hitter Kathleen Wallace, the Crimson went on to win the next three matches to finally get over the hump and earn Harvard’s first NCAA Tournament bid.
“Making history, that feeling of excitement doesn’t go away with time,” Bain said. “The fact that we made history for Harvard volleyball is the most special part about the whole experience because we’ve worked so hard to make this program what it is today, and the program has given us a lot.”
While NCAA title aspirations were never in the picture for the Crimson, the team made its presence known during its short stint on the national stage. In a first-round matchup against eventual national champion Nebraska, Harvard won the first set of the match, one of only three that the Cornhuskers would drop over the entirety of the tournament.
But Harvard’s story was not as simple as a team making one final step towards reaching the pinnacle. The Crimson had lost former co-captain Kristen Casey ’15 and Caroline Walters ’15—who had notched 226 kills in her last year with the squad—to graduation.
Graduation was not the only thing to steal players away from the team. Senior middle blocker Jennifer Shults, who finished her junior year sixth in kills and fourth in total blocks, was not able to return to the team this season after suffering an injury at the end of last year.
The conference season did not start well, either, as Harvard lost its first Ivy League match to Dartmouth at home in a league in which no team since 2004 had won a share of the title with more than two losses.
“It was definitely a wake-up call,” sophomore outside hitter Paige Kebe said. “Teams had it out for us because we were one of the Ivy League champions last year. It definitely forced us to get our heads on straight.”
Adding injury to insult was the team’s decision to shut down junior Grace Weghorst for the season due to back ailments, which left the Crimson without two of its three leaders in kills from the year prior. The loss of Weghorst meant that the team would have to rely more heavily on its senior leaders and freshmen newcomers.
“We were sort of expecting her not to play,” Kebe said. “It was very unfortunate, even if it was expected.”
Entering the season, the senior core-four—co-captains middle blocker Caroline Holte and setter Hannah Schmidt, alongside libero Sindhu Vegesena and outside hitter Kathleen Wallace—had played a combined 250 matches. In the last years of their careers, their performances reached a pinnacle.
Holte became the program leader in career blocks assisted, helping to solidify the middle of the defense for a team the led the Ancient Eight in total blocks. Vegesena was second in the Ivy League in digs per game, while Schmidt tallied a career high in total assists. By season’s end, Wallace ranked fifth in the conference in kills per set, which helped fill the void left by Weghorst’s absence and earn her first team All-Ivy honors.
“For me, they are Harvard volleyball,” Bain said. “They were there when I came in and they were closest to me in friendship, as teammates, and age. Not having them anymore is very noticeable. It’s definitely bittersweet.”
Between the seniors and Bain, the Crimson had the parts in place to be title contenders. But contributions from new sources—ones that hadn’t been a large part of the previous season—helped push the Crimson over the top.
Freshman middle blocker Christina Cornelius caught the attention of the Ancient Eight, leading the conference in blocks per game on her way to notching Ivy League Rookie of the Year and First-Team honors.
“Christina was a recruit all of us were very excited about getting,” Bain said. “She came from my club, so …. I had heard things from my old coaches about her competitive drive, which is my favorite part of her as a teammate….I trust her, regardless of age. She’s my wingman in terms of stepping up at the end of the game.”
Kebe doubled her kill total from last season—ranking third on the team—while rookie Jocelyn Meyer finished sixth having only played 18 games on the season.
“Just having a year of college experience under your belt will help anybody,” Kebe said. “It really just gave me a boost of confidence and my teammates were so supportive of my growth as a player.”
Meyer’s impact was felt most in her game-high 11 kill performance against Yale in the team’s fifth game of the season. A loss would have dropped the squad to 3-2 on the season, but Harvard rolled through the Bulldogs at home in straight sets.
The team did not get through the season without its low points—a 3-1 loss at Columbia and a 3-0 defeat at Princeton. But, with increased parity throughout the league, the Crimson still had a shot at a share of the title entering its last game of the season with four losses. Wallace’s 13 kills drove the Crimson past Brown in the season finale, keeping pace with the Tigers at the top of the conference standings.
Harvard indeed ended with two more losses this year than last. But it also ended up one with one more NCAA Tournament bid.
—Staff writer Kurt T Bullard can be reached at kurt.bullard@thecrimson.com.
