GEORGETOWN TEXAS - Southwestern Volleyball made the drive to San Antonio, Texas this weekend to participate in the Trinity Fall Invitational. The Pirates would play two games on Saturday, first the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens and then the Whittier College Poets. 

The Pirates had already taken on the Sagehens earlier this season, downing them by a score of 3-1. Southwestern knew their opponent well and used it to their advantage, beating the Sagehens this time 3-0 while not allowing their opponent to even touch double digits in the third set. The Pirate offense was firing on all cylinders, accumulating 43 total kills with five different Pirates notching over five kills. Carly Berkman, hitting at a .450 percent clip, and Kacy Miller led the attack with ten and nine kills respectively. Erica Otto and Annika Flora joined in with six and seven. 

"We, as a team, focused on some key areas in the gym learning and developing this last week and we saw the fruits of this hard work today. The middles worked diligently to be available in their attacking and to turn some block touches into block stuffs. We also wanted to be more terminal in our attacking and we raised our kill percentage compared to our last few matches. As a whole this was a balanced and complete team win," says Coach Flora. 

In the second match of the day the Pirates were met with a Whittier College team that had come off of three straight losses in the Invitational and were determined to get a win. 

The Pirates dropped the first set to the Poets by a 20-25 margin after the Poets went on a long offensive run following a 14-14 tie midway through the contest. Despite the first set loss, the Pirates came back focused in the second and third sets, taking a 2-1 set lead headed into the fourth. However, Southwestern was unable to capitalize on the 2-1 lead they gained and the Poets came roaring back, taking the 3-2 victory.

"There are matches that you need to go through to learn, grow and develop. Tonight was one of those matches. We give credit to the Poets for staying the course with their game plan, and this will help us as we head into the SCAC phase of the season," explains Coach Flora. 

Southwestern will host a SCAC crossover event next weekend where the Pirates will take on Colorado College, Schreiner, and Trinity from Friday, September 22nd to Saturday, September 23rd.