Photo by Shane Rodrigues

Story by Sebastián Abdón Ibarra, Sports Information Student Assistant

LA VERNE, CA — The University of La Verne volleyball team (8-13; 4-10) started their final week of the season with an impressive 3-1 win against the Caltech Beavers (10-13; 5-10) on Tuesday night. The Leos started off the night with an ugly loss in the first set but responded very well to take the next three sets, including overcoming an 11-18 deficit in the fourth set for the win.

Set Scores: 9-25, 25-9, 25-14, 25-22

Unfortunately, the Leos fell short of their goal to make the conference tournament this year, but this team still had a goal to play for in this game and for the rest of the week.

"It's the same thing we always play for. It's to get better and to improve. We are not making the conference tournament for this year, but the things we do, the things we say, the way we act is also a part of what we are trying to accomplish, which is being a playoff and championship-caliber program," University of La Verne head volleyball coach Jeff Hendershot said.

La Verne held a 2-1 set lead going into the fourth set, but for a moment it looked as if Caltech was taking this game to a fifth set as they held an 11-18 lead late. However, the Leos were not to be denied. La Verne scored five straight points coming from kills by Jasmine Chandler and Emily Heldenbrand and a little help from some Caltech mistakes. A ball handling error and two attack errors by the Beavers reduced their lead to 16-18. With the score at 17-20 in favor of Caltech, the Leos scored six points in a row to completely swing momentum in their favor. Four different Leos recorded a kill in this sequence and Caltech gifted another two attack errors to give La Verne a 23-20 lead. La Verne capitalized and closed out the set 25-22. This seven-point comeback by the Leos was second only to their performance in their second game of the season where they overcame a 10 point deficit against Eastern Nazarene College on Sept. 3.

The first set was not the way La Verne had hoped to start the game. They fell into a deep hole early, and couldn't seem to find their way out as the Beavers simply outplayed them to win 9-25.

However, the Leos showed a lot of heart by flushing the previous set's result and starting fresh in the second set. They flipped the script and proceeded to outplay Caltech by the same score of 25-9. Kari Esseff, Ayana Mier, Noelani Soma, and Heldenbrand all stepped up in a big way to combine for 12 kills after they combined for just two kills in the first set.

"We had a real specific game plan, which we did not follow in the first set. In that second set they refocused, they dedicated themselves to the game plan and executed it," Hendershot said.

Heldenbrand had the best attacking performance of her career finishing with 11 kills to go with 19 assists, 16 digs, and two blocks. Mier added a team-high 13 kills and five blocks.

Ha'ani Untalan had a big game totaling nine kills and 19 digs. Madison Smith led the Leopards with 20 digs, Jordyn Patton finished with 17 digs, and Essef notched nine kills.

La Verne's final road game of the season is this Friday at 7:00 p.m. against the University of Redlands. After each team had their early game struggles, the third set was a much more competitive showing from both sides. The game was relatively even towards the halfway point, but La Verne pulled away with an eight-point-scoring streak, which was only briefly interrupted with a single point from Caltech, to take the set.