Mountain Hawks sunk by Navy in five sets Saturday

Saturday, September 22

Bethlehem, Pa.

4 p.m.

Lehigh University

12-2, 1-1PL

Navy

10-5, 2-0PL

Navy

Lehigh

Mountain Hawks sunk by Navy in five sets Saturday

9/22/2018 8:31:00 PM | Volleyball

Box Score

BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Lehigh fell just a tad short in its attempt to improve to 13-1 on the year, losing to Navy in yet another hard-fought five-set match at Leeman-Turner Arena on Saturday.

Fresh off coming away with a 3-2 win against Loyola on Friday night to claim their first Patriot League win of the year, Navy proved to be another tough challenge for the Mountain Hawks.

Navy came out strong in the match, taking the first set 25-13, before Lehigh stormed back to take sets two and three by scores of 25-22 and 25-18. The Mountain Hawks had a little bit of momentum heading into the fourth set, but the Midshipmen came out strong once again.

"We had a ton of contributors today," said head coach Alexa Keckler. "It was a brutal weekend, back-to-back five-set matches and we had to go deep in our bench. Unfortunately things didn't go our way today, but certainly a well-fought match."

The Mountain Hawks did have a lot of different players see time in this match against Navy, including freshman Ava Hudson seeing her first minutes of the season, as well as junior Jess Donaldson seeing time on the floor again. However, the Mountain Hawks didn't hit nearly as well as they would've liked to, as they hit only .076 as a team for the match, their lowest of the season.

The Midshipmen contained Lehigh players such as sophomore Sabrina Lancaster for most of the match, limiting the outside hitter to a season-low three kills. Junior Lauren Bright was a key player for the Mountain Hawks once again, leading the team in kills with 12, including a season-high nine blocks. Junior Emily Poole increased her Patriot League leading hitting percentage to .410 with her 11-kill performance, hitting at a .435 mark for the match. While offense was definitely not up to Coach Keckler's standard against Navy, the defense thrived and showed through all five sets.

"Defensively I thought that we played better today than we did yesterday, which was a good thing for us," said Keckler. "But I think a lot of it will just be going back to film and seeing what we need to really focus on. We had a really great serving night last night and I thought we served pretty well today. Offensively we just couldn't get anything going."

(9/22/2018) 1993 Volleyball PL Champion Recognition

Freshman setter Alina Lam finished with 24 assists and 14 digs, while junior Julia Pressly had 10 kills, many of which were in big moments, with five digs. Sophomore Hannah Wright added seven kills and 15 digs.

For Navy, a lot of its success was shown through the play of Patriot League Player of the Week Katie Patrick, who finished the match with eight kills and 10 blocks. Maddi Sgattoni paced the Midshipmen with 22 kills and 20 digs.

With the loss, the Mountain Hawks fall to 12-2 on the year and 1-1 in Patriot League play, while the Midshipmen improve to 10-5 overall, 2-0 in the league so far.

Before the match, Lehigh recognized the members of the 1993 Patriot League Championship team with a special pre-game ceremony. There will be more to come in the coming days on this group of women who brought the first Patriot League Championship to Lehigh.

The Mountain Hawks have another week off before heading to Army West Point on Friday before heading just a little bit more up north to play the Crusaders of Holy Cross on Saturday.

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