After a grueling, tightly fought game, Elon women’s volleyball fell 1-3 to Davidson College in the fourth set.
The first set started off slow, with Davidson building up a lead after an early six-point scoring run.This started the Phoenix off with a deficit of 3-8. Elon showed signs of life after senior Cameron Lanier’s set to junior Catherine Rucker ended in a kill that brought the score to 8-14.
Davidson stifled multiple Phoenix attacks, ultimately holding down an 11-point lead to take the first set 14-25, despite Lanier and junior Anna Sewell having three kills each. In the first set, Elon put up zero blocks to Davidson’s five.
Momentum started to switch in the second set, with Elon keeping the score within close margins. Senior captain Shannon O’Laughlin sent a screamer down Davidson’s court to cut their lead to three, with 13-16 showing on the scoreboard. Sewell kept up the momentum with a kill to keep the scoring gap from widening.
Both senior Caroline Berlekamp and Rucker were able to deny Davidson for back-to-back Phoenix points. Elon’s fighting spirit, which head coach Matt Troy said is an emphasis in practice, was on full display after sophomore April Rice assisted Lanier to keep the Phoenix’s fire from fading, bringing the score to 20-23.
Elon would lose the set after a kill from Davidson stole the match point. The Phoenix were left in a 0-2 deficit that required a win in the third set to stay alive.
“I think that we really just needed a mentality switch,” Lanier said. “Like we had lost the first two sets, we were down. We knew that if we wanted to keep the game going, we had to win that third set. And so we all just kind of lit a fire under our butts, and we're like, we have to win this, and everybody's just going to play together.”
On top of a switch in mentality, Troy also switched freshman Lindsey Murphy in at libero for junior Casey Brower before the third set began, hoping to prevent Davidson from running away with the game.
“Lindsey has shown that she has the capability to play libero there, and just to give Davidson a little bit of a different look,” Troy said. “They seemed to have our number a little bit dialed in, and sometimes when you have a game plan for a team, and you make some switches, now all of a sudden they're trying to figure it out, so they're not comfortable anymore.”
It was in the third set that the Phoenix were able to build up their largest lead of the game at 12-9 after Davidson launched the ball long. Elon’s sudden resurgence led Davidson to call a timeout, but that wouldn’t be enough to stop the Phoenix from taking the third set.
After multiple fakeouts, Rucker gave Davidson a reckoning with a monster kill that brought Elon up 16-13. From there, the Wildcats became discombobulated, sending a shot wide for a Phoenix freebie, taking the score to 18-15.
The team was on fire in the third set and wouldn’t be extinguished. Sewell marked another point for the Phoenix, and a block from Berlekamp and Schultz brought the score to 24-20. Murphy rounded out the set with a heroic defensive save, giving Lanier and Berlekamp the ability to deliver Elon’s first match point through a block assist.
“I think it was a really big momentum switch going into the fourth,” Lanier said when asked about how it felt to clinch the third set.
Set four was win or go home, and it looked like the Phoenix were in position to force Davidson into a fifth set, especially after Sewell and Rucker teamed up for a block to tie the set at 15-15.
That’s when Davidson went on a four-point hot streak. Sewell looked to drag Elon into a fifth set after she marked another kill, but Elon was in dangerous territory, with Davidson striking for their 23rd point.
Despite the Phoenix’s best efforts and what was shaping up to be an incredible comeback, Elon would lose the fourth set at 17-25, falling to 2-7 on the year.
The Phoenix next play at home against University of South Carolina Upstate at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, in Schar Center.