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BY TIMOTHY BERNSTEIN

In print | Published October 22, 2009

Non-Centennial Conference teams, be alert: Swarthmore is red-hot and doesn’t plan on overlooking you.

On Saturday, the Swarthmore volleyball team found some time in between conference matches to sweep a tri-meet against Rowan and Stevenson at Rowan University, avoiding any type of letdown following a tough stretch of conference matches.

The first match of the day, held at 11 a.m., couldn’t have gone any more smoothly for the Garnet (18-6, 6-1 CC) as they dispatched the Rowan Owls in three games (25-22, 25-19, 25-13) and appeared to gain momentum as the match progressed, culminating in a dominant performance in the third game. Genny Pezzola ’12 led the way with 10 kills and 18 digs, spearheading a suffocating Garnet defense that allowed only 26 Rowan kills while tallying 91 total digs.

The afternoon match against the Stevenson University Mustangs proved to be a greater challenge, forcing the Garnet to overcome a two-set deficit on the way to their first five-set win of the season, taking three of the five, with final scores of 20-25, 23-25, 25-14, 25-13 and 15-6.

Once again, Pezzola led the team with 30 digs and 13 kills. Setters Kearney Bangs ’10 and Allie Coleman ’13 combined for 30 assists as well.

Stevenson’s Amy Rudolph led both teams with 22 service aces, while fellow Mustang Avery Gabbard led them with nine kills.

“I’m very proud of our team coming back the way we did,” Pezzola said. “I think it shows that we can come back from anything and that we don’t give up.”

“The team is at a really exciting place in the season right now,” outside hitter Johanna Bond ’10 said. “This proves that we can come back to win any match.”

The victory was only the Garnet’s second five-set match of the season, the first coming in a loss to Johns Hopkins in which the Garnet failed to hold a two-set lead.“We said to each other ‘Let’s do to [Stevenson] what Hopkins did to us,’” Bond said, referring to the Hopkins comeback.

While the Garnet defense deserves praise for stopping the Stevenson attack (33 points over the final three sets), Pezzola indicated that another factor was key in the team’s turnaround.

“Over the fall break, we like to watch a lot of movies together,” Pezzola said, “and in particular we watched ‘Remember the Titans,’ including the locker-room scene where the coach rallies the team at halftime. So in the middle of [the Stevenson match], [outside hitter] Kat Montemurro [’13] got all of us in a circle and gave us this pep talk where she quoted the movie. That definitely pumped all of us up and made us ready to play.”

Montemurro also contributed 12 kills and three service aces, providing both tangible and intangible support in the win.

With the victories, Swarthmore improves to 17-6 overall and 12-5 in nonconference play. Despite the fact that the tri-meet did not count in the conference standings, the Garnet refused to disregard the two teams they faced on Saturday.

“We look at every game as a game we need to win,” Pezzola said. “While the non-conference matches give us an opportunity to prepare for conference games, we knew that we needed to go out there [on Saturday] and play hard.”

Indeed, the Garnet is just taking it one game at a time for now, albeit with an eye on several upcoming big games, including road matches at Gettysburg on Oct. 24 and Haverford on Oct. 28. “We still have some of the toughest games of the season ahead of us,” Bond said.

Last night, the Garnet continued its impressive run, winning its record sixth Centennial Conference game, crushing Ursinus (8-14, 2-6 CC) at Tarble Pavilion by a score of 3-0 (25-15, 25-14, 25-19).

The match also marked Swarthmore’s participation in the annual Dig For The Cure fundraiser for breast cancer research, in which pledged donations were collected for each of the 91 digs.

The Garnet hopes to continue its intra-conference success Saturday, when they travel to Gettysburg (16-7, 5-2 CC), to compete with the team that has handed the Garnet straight-set losses the past two seasons. Game time is set for 1 p.m.

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