CMS Volleyball Sweeps La Verne for 16th Straight Win

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The second-ranked Claremont-Mudd-Scripps volleyball team used a balanced attack and 13 service aces as it cruised to a 25-16, 25-20, 25-19 win over La Verne on Tuesday evening at Roberts Pavilion.

With the win, the Athenas improve to 16-0 overall on the season and 9-0 in the SCIAC, with all nine league wins coming via 3-0 sweeps. La Verne, meanwhile, slips to 7-9 overall and 3-6 in the league with the defeat. 

Melanie Williams had 11 kills, Izzy Sakoda had nine, and Jackie Jones and Audrey Sawyer each had eight for CMS. The Athenas also had six different players record service aces, five of whom had more than one, led by Sawyer and Spencer Hagenbuch with three apiece, and Jones, Dede Carranza and Georgia McGovern with two apiece. 

Sawyer had all three of her aces in a span of four points, when CMS came back from its largest deficit of the night in the second set, trailing 13-8. After a timeout, Summer Ellis had a kill, Sawyer had three aces around a La Verne error, and Ellis had another kill to cap a 6-0 run.

After La Verne tied it 14-14, CMS earned the next four points, including another ace, this time from McGovern, sandwiched between kills from Williams and Jones, to make it a 19-15 Athena lead. A Sawyer kill pushed the lead to 24-17, and La Verne fought off three set points before an error ended the set with a 25-20 score and the Athenas up 2-0. 

La Verne put up another battle in the first half of the third set, taking a 12-11 lead at one point. It was still tied 13-13, when CMS used a 4-0 run, started by a Sakoda kill and capped by two straight Carranza aces, to take a 17-13 lead.

La Verne bounced back with the next four points to tie it again, but CMS had a 6-0 run to seal it. Williams and Sawyer had kills to start it, Hagenbuch had two straight aces in the middle, and Sawyer had two straight blocks (one solo, one with Sakoda) to end it. With the score 23-19, Hagenbuch had a kill off a fake set to bring it to match point, and Sawyer finished off the match with an unassisted kill off an overpass. 

CMS will be back in action on Friday night when it travels to Cal Lutheran for a 7 p.m. matchup, before returning to Roberts Pavilion the following day to take on Caltech at 4 p.m.