On April 2,the Elizabethtown College men’s volleyball team acknowledged their seniors before heading into a match with the Penn State Schuylkill Nittany Lions. The game occurred in Elizabethtown College’s Thompson Gymnasium.
Before the event started, Etown made the starting lineup announcements a spectacle for the Jays on the field. After the Lions received a simplistic roll call, every Etown athlete received an introduction akin to a flashy wrestling match, with the lights dimmed and spotlights galore. Presumably unintentionally, this pregame treat set the mood for every second of the game.
The actual beginning of the game started with a fierce offense from the Jays. Despite an attempted save by Schuylkill, Etown senior Ethan Scott scored the first point of the match. Senior Ben Robbins immediately followed up with a serve that shot right past Schuylkill’s defenses. These plays combined with numerous attack errors from the Lions and kills from other Blue Jays like junior Logan Smith let the Jays build up a 12-point lead before the Lions could even score.
The game did not shift much in Schuylkill’s favor after scoring their first few points. Their first point came about from a service error from the Jays. Despite the ball being in their court, they only scored one more point before committing a service error themselves, opening them up to a five-point combo from the Jays. The Lions could only claw back so much ground before the Jays won the set, 25-9.
Despite the Jays’ road to victory looking clear at this point in the match, some Lions refused to give up. Schuylkill first-year David Imeogu visibly put up a strong defense throughout the game. His attempts to block shots and save the ball usually featured sprints and slides across the court and looked to pose a threat to the Jays. However, it did little to turn the tides in his team’s favor.
The second set played out similarly to the first, as the Jays continued utterly demolishing the Lions’ defense. While Schuylkill junior Bryce Hensley and first-year Jeremiah Miller earned their team a few points at the start, the Jays continued their streak of earning several points in a row. Scott scored two back-to-back kills and scored another after only one point earned by Schuylkill, and two more Blue Jays earned kills after that.
The Blue Jays did trip up more in the second set, allowing Schuylkill to make up the difference between the two teams. However, it did little to change the outcome as the Jays won the second set, 25-15. By this time, the match moved away from determining the winner between these two teams and towards whether the Lions could do anything to stop Etown’s astounding momentum.
The third set ended up just like the second and first, but Etown’s point-scoring streaks did not hold up for long throughout it. Despite some more kills earned by Scott and Robbins, Schuykill came close to overtaking the Blue Jays. The 10-or-more point gap between the two teams compressed into a three-to-five-point-long distance, and the Lions hoped to make that gap jumpable.
Their opportunity came in the form of a service error from the Jays. Etown first-years Declan Keller and Arun Gopinath’s kills brought Elizabethtown one point away from winning the set and the entire game, but a last-second fumble put the ball in Schuylkill’s court. By this time, the score was 24-17. Seven points in a row did not seem like an impossible task if they played at their peak. Schuylkill sophomore Jayden Ferdinand readied himself to serve.
The dull thump of the ball hitting the net that momentarily echoed through the court was almost certainly the last thing he wanted to hear.
With that, the Jays won against the Lions with a final score of 25-17 and no set losses to their name. This match seemed to cap off their season with an overall score of 17-11 and a pleasant memory for the seniors to take to Commencement.
