WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — The Goshen College women's volleyball team opened its 52nd season of intercollegiate competition on Friday with a trio of defeats at the Palm Beach County Sports Commission Volleyball Classic, dropping contests to Columbia International University and Faulkner University as well as host Keiser University.
MATCH 1: Columbia International 3, Goshen 0 (box score)
Emily Lynch led Goshen with 9 kills in her collegiate debut, but an overpowering second set led Columbia International to a three-set win 25-17, 25-5, 25-20 Friday morning. The Maple Leaf team leaders in aces, assists and digs were all players making their first appearances in GC purple, as were two of the three players who added blocks.
GC rocketed to a 4-2 lead in the first set, getting a Haylee Pennington kill and a pair of Gwyn Bellamy aces to take the lead, before the Rams reeled off nine points in a row. Christina Towne and Jaelyn Amhdar added aces off the backs of kills by Madison Coles and Maddy Beaver. CIU used a pair of 10-point runs to blow the second set open and went up 9-5 in the third before Goshen began to reply.
A 7-2 Maple Leaf spurt briefly gave the Hoosier side the lead at 12-11, but the Rams pulled back in front before 3 Lynch kills closed the gap to 18-17. Another Lynch winner started a 3-point Goshen run, but Columbia International ripped off the last six points on kills, aces and blocks.
Columbia International recorded at least 12 kills in every set while Goshen finished with 21 for the match. CIU also had more blocks (9) than hitting errors (7).
Karla Rodriguez led the Rams (2-1) with 10 digs and 4 aces. Kira Rymer had a match-high 12 kills and the team outblocked Goshen 9-2. Bellamy paced the Maple Leafs with 3 aces and 7 digs while Jaelyn Amhdar added 10 assists and Sadie Brenneman also recorded 7 digs.
MATCH 2: Faulkner 3, Goshen 0 (box score)
Lynch again led the team with 9 kills and Brenneman added 8 to go with 2 aces in a 25-19, 25-20, 25-20 loss in the day's middle match as the freshmen came to the statistical forefront once again. Amhdar racked up 12 assists and 6 digs, leading the team on both counts, and Beaver also had a pair of aces.
The Eagles (1-2) got off to a hot start by winning 11 of the first 16 rallies before Beaver's first ace capped a 4-1 run from the Maple Leafs (0-2) to tie the score at 14 in the first set. Julia Rice had 3 kills and Kate Jordan added a pair as Faulkner had another run in its wings, though, taking 8 of 9 points on the way to a first-set win.
Neither team won more than 3 consecutive points in the second set, but the Eagles strung together three of those runs in quick succession to go up 10-6. Brenneman chipped in an ace between Faulkner attack errors, which got the score back to 18-17, but GC was unsuccessful on both of its attempts to tie the set. Hannah Bryan whacked kills on three of the last eight rallies as Faulkner turned a 20-18 lead into a two-set advantage.
Goshen led 6-2 and 9-5 in the final set before Keiser came back to tie the score at 10. The Maple Leafs rebounded, getting a kill by Lynch and one by Haylee Pennington in a 3-point spurt of their own, but the Eagles responded with an 8-1 run to run the margin to 18-14, which was also the year that saw the United States take Mobile Bay from Spain to complete the territory that is now Faulkner's home state of Alabama.
Lynch added a pair of winners and GC's defense forced two attack errors to close within 20-19, but three kills and two blocks ended any hope of a Maple Leaf comeback.
Faulkner got 6 kills apiece from Rice, Hannah Bryan and Mackenzie Littrell, which accounted for exactly half of its 36 winners (12 in each set). Alysa Vinson led all players with 14 digs and Alyssa Stagner had 16 assists.
MATCH 3: Keiser 3, Goshen 0 (box score)
Brenneman led the Maple Leafs with 8 kills and 3 aces while Beaver and Lynch combined on all three Maple Leaf blocks in the nightcap, a 25-14, 25-18, 25-13 loss to 20th-ranked Keiser. The host Seahawks (2-3) registered 31 kills to Goshen's 23 but posted a 28-7 edge in hitting errors forced.
Amber Dilsaver and Anna Lea Kuster led Keiser with 7 kills. Dilsaver also posted 4 blocks and Kuster recorded a match-high 8 digs.
The Seahawks won the first four points of the match and eventually took a double-digit lead in the first set before Goshen rebounded with a 5-2 run, getting kills from four different people to close within 22-14. The second set started somewhat similarly, with Keiser winning nine of the first 12 points, before Goshen climbed back within 11-9 on kills from Amhdar, Pennington and Emma Dippon. That two-point margin would be as close as GC got, though, and a 6-2 Seahawk run closed the set.
The third stanza began with dueling 3-point runs before a 5-1 Keiser streak opened an 8-4 lead. Brenneman added a late winner, but the Seahawks ended the match on a 12-3 run.
MATCH 4: Life (Ga.) 3, Goshen 1 (box score)
The Maple Leafs claimed their first set win of the season in a 25-23 third set and reached 20 points of a possible 25 in two of the other three, but could not become the first roadblock in an undefeated opening weekend for the Running Eagles.
Dippon led all players with 5 blocks to go with her team-high 7 winners in the match and Goshen hit .364 with 11 kills in the set it won. However, Life (4-0) racked up at least 12 kills in each of the other three sets, finishing with a 45-19 edge in spike winners and outhitting Goshen .225 to .044 in the remaining three stanzas.
Naomi Willis led the Maple Leafs with 17 assists while Brenneman had 6 kills and 8 digs. Haylee Pennington also added 6 kills. Life got 12 kills from Emilee Brown and 25 digs off the forearms of Savannah Keener.
The Georgia side flew out to a quick 7-0 lead in the first set before kills by Pennington, Coles and Pennington again brought the Maple Leafs back within 14-12. GC closed the gap to two points again at 24-22, saving two set points in the process in a 6-2 run, but could not level in the opening set.
GC took its first lead in a set at 6-4 in the second after reeling off four straight points on Beaver's serve. The team held that lead as late as 11-10 before a 6-1 run capped with back-to-back Brown aces swung the momentum back in the other direction.
A 12-6 Eagle lead in the third set may have seemed to be an omen of another sweep, but Goshen had other ideas. Christina Towne's ace sparked a 6-1 streak to close the gap to 13-12 before Dippon, Lynch and Pennington combined to cut off the next run with kills and bring the Maple Leafs to 20-17. Even so, Life found itself two points from the match win at 23-20 six rallies later, but Goshen answered with six straight points to stay in the match. Coles, Beaver and Brenneman all had kills in that run and Towne added a pair of aces.
Goshen carried the momentum into the fourth set, winning four of the first five rallies, but Life answered that with a 4-0 spurt to go up 6-5. The Maple Leafs led by 3 as late as 13-10 before four straight attack errors started an eight-point shift in the opposite direction. Another 4-1 spurt made it 22-17 and the Running Eagles soon found the words of the prophets written on the subway walls.
Bellamy led Goshen with 17 digs.
MATCH 5: Montana Tech 3, Goshen 0 (box score)
Brenneman and Pennington led the Maple Leafs with 5 kills apiece, but a Montana Tech attack that hit .365 for the match and .643 in the two bookend sets proved too much for Goshen to overcome in its fifth match in 34 hours.
Taylor Henley and Sydney Parks led the Orediggers (4-0) with 10 kills apiece, outpacing Goshen's team output by two. Emma Carvo had 6 aces, Maureen Jessop chipped in 5 to go with 7 kills and McKenna Kaelber added 28 aces.
Goshen (0-5) led as late as 4-2 in the first set and leveled the score three more times. After that, Montana Tech went on a 10-1 run and subsequently traded points for the next 13 rallies. A Parks kill and a Kaelber ace ended the first set at 25-15.
The second set also had runs, but they were more of the dueling variety. Goshen went up 5-1 on three Oredigger errors, then extended the lead to 7-2 before falling behind 8-7. Another 5-1 spurt, which included three Pennington winners, pushed the GC lead back to 15-11, but MTU tied the set at 15, 17 and 18 before doubling their lead with a 7-2 finishing kick.
Montana Tech went on 7-0, 9-2 and 8-1 runs to close out the final set, hitting .737 with 15 kills in the process.
More Volleyball On The Way
Goshen is idle this week before making the 118-mile round trip to Huntington, Indiana, for the Forester Invitational at Platt Arena next weekend. GC will open its four-match slate at noon Friday against Lewis-Clark State of Idaho, then take on Saint Ambrose of Iowa at 6 p.m. On Saturday, the Maple Leafs will play Mount Mercy, also from the Hawkeye state, at 2 p.m., then meet Calumet College of St. Joseph at 8.
While all tournaments are susceptible to falling behind when matches run long, the Forester Invitational has proven exceptionally prone to that issue over the years due to its use of a single court. At the tournament's last iteration in 2019, the final matches each day began more than an hour late. Stay tuned to your favorite form of social media for updates throughout the weekend.
