LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Oct. 27, 2023) – A collaborative effort from almost all of the team's regular offensive contributors earned the Whittier College volleyball team a 3-0 victory at Occidental College on Friday night.
Three different players notched at least eights kills, as the Poets played one of their cleanest matches against a conference foe since the last time they played the Tigers at the annual Homecoming game. With the team's top competition for a SCIAC Postseason Tournament spot, California Lutheran University, suffering a defeat on Friday night, the Poets' path to the postseason has cleared up, with the magic number now set at just two games with four remaining on the schedule. However, the Poets will need to keep their foot on the gas pedal, as three of the final four opponents will be teams ranked ahead of them in the SCIAC standings. Nevertheless, the team is just two wins, or one win and one Cal Lutheran loss away from clinching the team's first postseason tournament appearance since 2015.
Even if the magic number is not fulfilled, the Poets can still qualify for the postseason tournament, provided they win the total sets tiebreaker battle with the Regals.
As for Friday's match, junior
Riley DeGroot (Ontario, Calif. / Mt. San Antonio College) and sophomore
Sofia Zazueta (La Mirada, Calif. / Orange Lutheran) led on the outside with eight kills apiece, while freshman opposite
Mia D'Amato (Bakersfield, Calif. / Garces) got in on the fun with eight kills of her own. All three players hit at least .261% for the match, with D'Amato being particularly dominant with kills on two-thirds of her total attempts. Collectively, the Poets hit a sterling .289% on the match, marking their highest attacking ratio since taking on Pacific Lutheran University at the 2023 Whittier College Invitational. What's more, the Poets kept the pressure on for all three sets, failing to hit under .276% in any single frame. Senior
Xenia Villagomez (Corona, Calif. / Santiago) also contributed in a big way with seven kills on 18 total attacks.
Whittier's dominance extended far beyond what they managed to accomplish in attacking scenarios, however. Junior libero
Nadine Oronoz (Whittier, Calif. / Rio Hondo College) aced the Tigers on four separate occasions, while DeGroot accounted for a quartet of aces of her own. As a result, the Poets wove together 11 service aces against just three errors over the three-set match. Given the individual set scores (and particularly the scores of the final two sets), the Poets put together several five-point runs, two of which occurred in the final set on the serve of both Oronoz and D'Amato. The Poets at one point led by a 23-9 margin in the third set, further evidence of total domination from the Purple & Gold on Friday night. If that wasn't enough, the Poets out-blocked the Tigers at the net at a 2:1 ratio, with five different Poets contributing to the total.
Duarte-McDermott and the Poets will now return home for a pivotal matchup with No. 4 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges on Saturday evening at 6 p.m. The Athenas are coming off a week where they dropped their first SCIAC game of the season to the University of La Verne, the No. 2 team in the conference, as well as a team the Poets took to five sets last month.
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