WORCESTER, Mass. – Senior Veronica Kroha had nine kills and three Owls hit .235 or better (two over .350), but the Keene State College women's volleyball team allowed Clark University to hit .264 as a team including over .400 in two different sets as they were handed a 3-1 loss (25-11, 18-25, 25-13, 25-17) Tuesday night at the Kneller Athletic Center.

Records

• Keene State:  2-2
• Clark:  3-1

How It Happened
The up-and-down beginning to the KSC season continued, as the Owls showed flashes of potential, but ultimately allowed 15 more aces (after surrendering 16 in their season-opening loss) and three Cougars to reach double-digit kills – including a whopping 15 against only one error for senior Camille Flurry (Athens, Ga.), who hit .538.  Sheyenne Williams also made only one miscue and had 10 kills on 19 attempts, while Victoria Pastor added 10 kills.  Clark hit an opponent season-high .264 against KSC, who did not win a match a year ago when their opponent hit better than .197 (0-12) but was 13-3 otherwise.  The Cougars were one of those teams to swing at a clip better than .197, hitting a nearly identical .262 last year in a 3-0 win.

Offensively, Keene State had bright spots, including Kroha who hit .353 on 17 attempts.  Stephanie Olah had six kills and hit .455 (11 attempts), while Molly Wetherbee had six kills (.235 pct.), and Gigi Stake six kills (.167 pct.).  However, as a team, set-by-set, the Owls have been a rollercoaster in the early-going.  They hit only .094 in the opening set tonight – a 25-11 loss – but rebounded to outhit Clark .286 to .054 in a second set that they sprinted out to a 9-3 advantage and won 25-18 while never trailing.  The Cougars then made only one error in an always critical swing third set, hitting .407 in a 25-13 win to give them the match lead, and then wrapped it up with a 25-18 victory.

All of the Owls' set losses featured slow starts; in the opening frame, they allowed the first five points and trailed 10-4 and 15-5 out of the gates, at one point allowing four consecutive kills from Flurry and Camille Sterling.  They never got closer than eight after that.  In the third set of a tied match, Clark scored eight of the first 11 points – three on setting miscues for KSC – and then made it 11-4 on two straight aces, from which the Owls never recovered, only getting as close as 14-10 before the home team answered with three in a row.  Facing a must-win fourth set, Keene State trailed 8-3 before scoring five straight – two on kills from Jessica Timothy, one from Sarah Bartels, and one on a block by Timothy and Wetherbee to tie it.  But Clark used a 5-1 binge to push their lead back to four, and the Owls never had a lead in the set.  They got within 14-12 on Kroha's point and an error by Williams, but then were outscored 5-1 in the next six points to fall behind by six.  They never got closer than four on three occasions after that, and after it was 21-17, four more kills in a row for Flurry and Sterling (two apiece) gave Clark – a 12-16 team from a year ago that did finish 8-2 at home – a win in their 2023 opener at the Kneller Center.

"We played good enough to beat some teams tonight, but not good enough against a pretty talented NEWMAC club," said Keene State head coach Bob Weiner.  "We made lots of mistakes but it is early and this is the kind of match where we learn stuff about how to move forward."

KSC got 17 assists from Alexis Small and 15 from Ainsley Hegg, and 12 digs from Reagan Fleming and 10 from Small.

Yumeng Liu had 16 digs for Clark, and Yvanna Torres 19 assists and Julia Dopazo 18 assists to go along with five aces.

Service Aces

• Clark outhit KSC .264 to .150, with that mark representing an early season best.  The Owls are hitting .124 as a team through four matches after posting a .169 percentage in their LEC championship season a year ago.
• Wetherbee is hitting .302 on 63 attempts this season, while Olah has 27 kills in four matches (.222 pct.).
• Keene State won five of six against Clark from 2006 through 2019, but is now 5-8 in the all-time series.
• Clark had a 15-6 advantage in aces.  KSC has been out-aced 31-10 in their two defeats.

Up Next

• The Owls travel to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a weekend invitational.  They first take on Endicott College (2-0) in Beverly on Friday, September 6 at 6:00 p.m.  KSC swept the Gulls in 2021 at this event, and then got swept last year.  Endicott is 2-0, having beaten Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Simmons University on the road in four sets each.  Keene State then plays the host and No. 13 Engineers and Ithaca College on Saturday in Cambridge.
• Clark, picked ninth in the NEWMAC preseason poll, travels to the Bates Invitational and will play Maine Maritime Academy (3-0) on Friday (September 6) at 5:00 p.m.