Aug. 26, 2011
Final Stats | Photo Gallery 
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The Navy volleyball team dropped a pair of matches Friday on the first day of the Kristen Dickmann Invitational that was played at the Wesley A. Brown Field House in Annapolis. The Mids opened the season with a 3-0 (27-25, 25-13, 25-14) loss to Bowling Green before suffering a 3-0 (25-20, 25-20, 25-18) loss to Iona.
Hurricane Irene has caused more changes in Saturday's schedule of matches at the tournament. Whereas originally there were five matches slated to be contested on the day, there is now but one match that will be played. That contest features the Mids playing host to Air Force at 11 a.m. A live, free video stream of the match will be available at www.NavySports.com(.)
Navy's opening set of the season saw the score tied 11 times and the lead change hands on five occasions. The score was tied 10 times between 11-11 and the end of the set, with four lead changes also taking place during this time frame.
After the score was tied at 14-14, the Falcons scored three quick points to take a 17-14 advantage. Navy quickly matched that mini run to knot the score at 17-17. The Mids then climbed back from a 21-19 deficit with back-to-back points. Navy would soon take a 24-23 lead when Erin Fortner (So., Villa Hills, Ky.) fed Alex Cassel (Fr., Sandy, Utah) for a kill. Bowling Green would erase Navy's set-point opportunity on a kill by Danielle Tonyan, then Tonyan and Emily Kauth combined for a block of Caroline Jacobs (So., Arnold, Md.) to take a 25-24 lead. Fortner found Christy Rapp (Jr., Royal Oak, Mich.) for a kill to tie the score again, but a service error by Jacobs and an ensuing service ace by Tonyan gave the Falcons the opening set victory.
"The first set of the first match of the day was today's best indicator of the true potential of the team," said Navy head coach Larry Bock. "I thought we played real well against a good team. We did everything well. It was fun. Then we backed into that idea of protecting the lead and it's not a game where you can do that; there is no clock in volleyball. Waiting for the other team to make a mistake is not a good way for any team to win, especially ours. We have to be smart and aggressive."
Bowling Green then turned a slim 11-9 lead in the second set into a 19-11 lead to win the second set, then scored nine of the opening 11 points of the third set to close out the match.
Despite holding just a 35-30 edge in kills, the Falcons outhit the Mids, .333-.092, in the match. Navy hurt itself by committing 14 service errors while Bowling Green tallied just six such miscues on serves.
Rapp paced the Mids with eight kills, while Holly Berger (Sr., Claremont, Calif.) grabbed a Navy-high nine digs. Tonyan led all players on the afternoon with 11 kills.
Navy's second match of the day saw Iona (1-1) attempt to pull away from the Mids in the opening set before Navy went on a nice rally to take the lead. The Gaels quickly turned a 6-6 set into a 15-8 lead and a 17-10 advantage. Navy climbed to within five points at 18-13 on a kill from Maida Kalic' (Sr., Vernon, N.Y.), then Rapp's serving led to four consecutive points for the Mids to make it a one-point set. A kill by Iona's Molly O'Shea made the score 19-17, but an attack error by Katie Marabella and back-to-back kills by Jacobs gave Navy a 20-19 advantage. However, those would be the last points of the set recorded by the Mids.
The second set was close pretty much from start to finish. Iona used a 4-0 run to build a 19-15 cushion and the Gaels were able to maintain a lead of at least three points over the remainder of the set. Iona then closed out the match by breaking open an 8-8 set with a 6-1 run.
Just as in Navy's first match of the day, the Mids nearly tallied as many kills as their foe did. In this instance, Iona knocked down 36 kills while Navy posted 34 kills. However, the Gaels hit .226 on the night while limiting the Mids to a mark of .128.
Kalic' led Navy with 12 kills and a .360 attack percentage, with Berger (17 digs) and Rapp (10 digs) keying Navy's defensive passing. Both Kalic' and Fortner posted three blocks in the match. Iona's Alicja Pawelec led all players with 13 digs, while Theresa Harvey grabbed 21 digs.
"We think we're making a lot of fast mistakes," said Bock of Navy's efforts on the first day of the 2011 season. "We're trying to play like a big team, but we are really a small, scrappy team. Rallies have to last a long time for us to be successful and we are trying to end rallies before we are capable of doing so. We're going to have to be patient, we're going to have to play somewhere between timid and mindlessly aggressive; that's a balance point we've only seen on occasion so far."
