WHITTIER, Calif. (Sept. 9, 2022)- The Poets hosted the visiting University of Puget Sound Loggers and Chapman Panthers this Saturday in the Whittier Invitational. The team brought their record up to 2-3 on the year, with a win against Puget Sound. 

Coming off a tournament where the Poets fell to a record of 1-3, they rebounded fantastically with a dominate win over the Loggers in their season home-opener. 

In the first set of the match, the Poets took the game all the way down to the wire, but were finally able to slam the door on their opponents with a 25-23 win. After jumping ahead early, the women came out a little flat at the beginning of the second set. Following the slow start the women were finally able to find their groove and fight back towards the end, but unfortunately fell short in the set 20-25. Using the second set as motivation, the Poets came out with a massive rebuttle as they went on to have great team play on both the offensive and defensive sides in the third set to steal it from the Loggers by a score of 25-15. After taking the thrid set, Whittier started the fourth will all the momentum and carried it through to the match end. They would go on to continue commanding the game on both sides and took the fourth set 25-13. The match would end there with a 3-1 victory over the visiting Puget Sound Loggers.

There were plenty of stand-out performances throughout the match as the team played great together. With freshman Cheyanne Ybanez, leading the team in kills with 17. Another stand-out was 6'3" freshman Maya Cicero, who lead the Poets in hitting percentage with a .500 and 8 kills. A final shinning light in the game, came on the defensive side of the net when junior libero, Tori Mejia, lead the match with 17 total digs. 

Head coach Chris Duarte-McDermott and the Poets will look to carry their momentum forward to the next game, as they will host the visiting UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs on Tuesday, September 13th in the Graham Athletics Center at Whittier College at 5:00.

Photo: Tony Leon/ActionWestPhotography.com