Volleyball loses to Yale, destroys Brown

The Lions (13-7, 7-3 Ivy) stayed at home this weekend, playing host to Yale and Brown here at Levien Gymnasium.

Yale (15-5, 9-1 Ivy) came to New York on Friday riding high off three consecutive wins. The Lions needed to defeat the Bulldogs to maintain hopes of taking the conference title. The Bulldogs came ready to fight.

Columbia started off strong, taking the first set, 25-23, and dealing the Bulldogs a blow early. However, the Bulldogs regrouped and went on to take the next three sets, winning the match 3-1.

“There’s only one comment you can have at this stage of the season in a match like that: you have to get it done and we didn’t,” head coach Jon Wilson said. “There’s no clichés that really matter, it’s just that we have to get it done and we have to pay the price for that, it hurts but that’s sports.”

Junior outside hitter Megan Gaughn also commented on Friday’s loss.

“I’m really proud of the maturity of our team,” she said. “We had a big talk before the game started about how we still have goals and we still have improvements we want to make.”

On Saturday, the Light Blue took on Brown. Unlike Yale, Brown has struggled to put together wins this season and was actually tied with Cornell and Penn for the bottom spot in conference rankings coming into this weekend.

The Lions came out strong against the Bears, beating them in straight sets, 25-15, 25-17, and 25-23.

“We bounced back today and played two really good games and got sloppy in the third,” Wilson said. “It was a reasonable effort given that we were carrying a lot of grief.”

Wilson also noted that Brown’s record and prior losses didn’t factor into their preparation for the Bears.

“We prepare for everybody the same, we prepared for our Friday night match all week,” he said. “The goal was to run the middle, the middles hit phenomenally well and carried the match for us. We definitely had help from Caitlin on the right side and the outside hitters but the middles—Madeline [Rumer], Heather [Braunagel], and Mo [Monique Roberts]—did what they wanted and that’s what made it go in three.”

Yet despite the victory over the Bears, it was still a tough match for the Light Blue in light of the loss to Yale.

“It’s hard to get up the emotion after last night,” Wilson said. “The focus was there even if we didn’t have as much energy. I was never too nervous about it, everyone stepped up and played their part.”

Losing to Yale makes the Lions’ potential road to a championship much more difficult. The Lions still trail both Yale and Princeton and would thus need to usurp both teams in the final two weeks of the season. In order to do this, the Lions would likely have to win out while counting on losses by both Yale and Princeton. This in itself could prove to be a challenge. Yale only has four more opponents—Penn, Princeton, Harvard, and Dartmouth. All four will be rematches, and Yale won the first meetings with Penn, Harvard and Dartmouth without dropping a single set.