PHILADELPHIA – After starting Ivy League play with three road matches, the University of Pennsylvania volleyball team is finally back at home for the first time in Ivy play this season. The Quakers host Columbia and Cornell this weekend at The Palestra.
 
MATCH 14 – PENN vs. COLUMBIA
Friday, Oct. 7 | 7 p.m.
Watch on ESPN+ ($) | Live Stats
 
MATCH 15 – PENN vs. CORNELL
Saturday, Oct. 8 | 5 p.m.
Watch on ESPN+ ($) | Live Stats
 
Ivy League on ESPN
A reminder that the Ivy League is paired with ESPN and you will be able to find all Penn home games, as well as road Ivy matches and select non-conference road games, on ESPN+ this fall with the same high broadcast quality you've come to expect. ESPN+ is a subscription-based service that offers monthly and yearly packages. Click here to subscribe to ESPN+!
 
The Series with Columbia
The Quakers have dominated this series overall and swept the season series last year, taking a 3-1 win in New York City and sweeping the Lions 3-0 at The Palestra in the final weekend of the season. Prior to last season, the teams had split the previous six meetings.
 
About Columbia
Like Penn, the Lions (3-9, 0-3 Ivy) are still looking for their first Ivy League win entering the weekend. Saj McBurrows and Pierce Woodall lead the attack with 83 kills each, McBurrows hitting .282 and Woodall .170. The setter is Ruby van der Heide, with 255 assists (6.07 a/s). On defense, Harper Justema leads the net defense with 30.0 blocks (2s/28a) while McBurrows has 24.0 (1/23) and Aidan Connor has 21.0 (2/19). Vanessa Pan leads Columbia with 172 digs and 24 service aces.
 
The Series with Cornell
The Big Red have dominated this series over the last several years, winning four of the last five and seven of the last 10 meetings. That said, the teams split last season's series, the home team winning in a sweep both times.
 
About Cornell
The Big Red (3-9, 1-2) opened Ivy play with a home win over Columbia but were swept by Brown and Yale last weekend. Eliza Konvicka has 117 kills while Joanna Chang has 91; both of them average more than two kills per set. Emma Worthington has 393 assists (8.93 a/s) and is second behind Chang with 92 digs (Chang has 102). The net defense is led by Sydney Moore who has 27.0 blocks (5s/22a), with Camryn Carlo (21.0) and Konvicka (20.0) also at or above 20. Sammie Engel leads Cornell with 20 service aces.
 
Cornell and Penn have one common non-conference opponent this season. The Big Red hosted and fell to Temple on September 10, 3-2, while Penn hosted the Owls a week later and dropped a 3-1 decision.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn is 1-12 overall and trying to shake off a 10-match losing streak that continued last weekend with losses at Harvard (3-2) and Dartmouth (3-1) in the first full weekend of Ivy play.
 
*Penn's record is a bit misleading, however; the Quakers have been pretty competitive in most of their matches. Of 37 sets lost this season, the Red and Blue have fallen 28-26 once, 25-23 four times, and 25-22 six times. They also have hit 20 and 21 three times each in set losses.
 
*A pair of seniors led the attack last weekend in New England. Madeline McGregor tied her season high with 15 kills in Cambridge, hitting a season-best .306, then followed up with 10 more in Hanover. She has hit double digits in kills in four of the last five matches and seven times overall this season.
 
*Autumn Leak, meanwhile, came off the bench in both matches with favorable returns. She had 10 kills against Harvard (hitting a staggering .429 in the match) and a team-high 12 at Dartmouth. Like McGregor, Leak—a second-team All-Ivy pick a year ago—has a double-digit kill total in four of her last five appearances.
 
*McGregor currently leads the team with 117 kills, but Leak tops the squad in kills per set (3.19).
 
*Sophomore Ella Green had 12 kills at Harvard last Friday, the third time she reached a double-digit kill total in five matches. She nearly had a double-double against Lehigh on September 20, with 16 kills (a season/career high) and nine digs. Green had 80 kills this season, averaging 2.29 kills/set.
 
*Junior Madison Risch is another regular threat at the net, with 76 kills (1.95 k/s).
 
*Freshman Anna Shohfi was back in the setter position last weekend and went the distance in both matches. She had a combined 78 assists while also proving opportunistic on attack with seven kills on 19 attempts.
 
*Shohfi enters this weekend leading the team with 229 assists and is fourth among Ivy players in assists per set (8.18).
 
*Senior Elizabeth Ford continues to be opportunistic at the net offensively. She had a season-high seven kills at Harvard last Friday, hitting .385, and followed up with three more kills at Dartmouth. Overall, the middle blocker has 32 kills on the season and is hitting .354.
 
*Freshman Abigail Reid, Penn's libero, continues to shine. She led all players in digs in both matches last weekend, with 20 at Harvard and 17 at Dartmouth. She remains second among Ivy players in digs per set (4.55), behind Princeton's Cameron Dames (4.76) who was the Ivy Defensive Player of the Year in 2019.
 
*McGregor had four service aces last weekend and leads Penn with 13, followed by Reid who has 11. Don't be surprised to see juniors Julia Bradshaw and Tatum DeMann and sophomore Kat Alexander brought on to serve through Penn's rotations.
 
*McGregor also leads Penn with 23.0 blocks this season (1s/22a), followed closely by junior Emerson Flornes who has 22.0 (2s/20a) and Claire Deller who has 21.0 (1s/20a). Ford has 11.0 blocks (2s/9a).
 
*Reid and Deller have both earned all-tournament honors this season, Reid getting hers the first weekend of the season at Fordham's Rose Hill Classic and Deller being honored two weeks later at Penn's Sheraton University City Invitational.
 
*Penn started 14 different players during the non-conference portion of the season, as head coach Meredith Schamun and her staff continued to tinker with the lineup ahead of the Ivy opener. Only two players have started all 13 matches to date: McGregor and Reid.
 
*Penn's trip to the Golden State the second week of the season—the Quakers lost matches to CSU-Northridge, Saint Mary's College, and the University of San Francisco—represented a relative homecoming for several members of Penn's team. In fact, nearly half of Penn's roster (eight of 18 players) hails from California including two who consider the Bay Area home: junior Madison Risch (Lafayette) and sophomore Ella Green (Greenbrae). The others are junior Emerson Flornes (Laguna Beach); sophomores Sydney Ormiston (Murrieta), Kat Alexander (Los Angeles) and Kaya Johnson (L.A.); and freshmen Claire Deller (Del Mar) and Jalen Tennyson (L.A.). Three of them—Alexander, Johnson and Tennyson—also attended the Marlborough School together.
 
*Penn opened the 2022 campaign at Fordham's Rose Hill Classic, going 1-2 with losses to Niagara (3-1) and the host Rams (3-0) but ending the weekend with a win over Fairleigh Dickinson (3-1).
 
*Penn went 8-15 overall last year and finished sixth in the Ivy League with a 5-9 record. In the Ivy League's 2022 preseason media poll released last week, the Quakers were picked to finish sixth again.
 
*Although she was hired in March 2020, this is only Schamun's second season as head coach of the Quakers. Penn did not play a 2020 season due to Ivy League restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
*Seniors Ford, Leak and McGregor are the 2022 team captains.