PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania volleyball team continues its early Ivy League road swing this weekend. After making the shortest trip in the league last Friday—it's barely an hour to Princeton—the Quakers take the longest trip in the league this weekend, from Philly to Northern New England. Penn plays Harvard on Friday night but then waits until Sunday to face Dartmouth. Sunday's match in Hanover will air live to a national TV audience on ESPNU.
 
MATCH 12 – PENN at HARVARD
Friday, Sept. 30 | 7 p.m.
Watch on ESPN+ ($) | Live Stats
 
MATCH 13 – PENN at DARTMOUTH
Sunday, Oct. 2 | 12:30 p.m.
Watch Live on ESPNU | 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 Harvard
The Crimson have a 6-4 lead over the last 10 meetings in this series, but the teams have split each of the last two seasons. Last year, Harvard came to Philly and downed the Quakers 3-1, but four weeks later Penn went to Cambridge and pulled out an 18-16 win in the fifth set for a dramatic, 3-2 win.
 
About Harvard
The Crimson are 1-8 and fell in their Ivy League opener last Saturday to Dartmouth, 3-1. Katie Vorhies leads the attack with 91 kills, while Ashley Wang has 69 and Nicole Prescott has 55. Two different setters have hit triple digits in assists, Bella Almanza (177) and Rocky Aguirre (137). Lindsey Zhang tops the Crimson with 87 digs while Almanza has 62, and at the net Ariana White has 38.0 blocks (8s/30a) while Ava Rauser had 15 block assists. Vorhies received honorable mention All-Ivy recognition a year ago, as did Olivia Cooper and Jaimie Rao.
 
The Series with Dartmouth
The Quakers have dominated much of this series, but things have been tight in recent years with Penn winning just four of the last seven meetings. Last season, the Quakers won 3-2 at The Palestra but the Big Green swept 3-0 in Hanover four weeks later.
 
About Dartmouth
The Big Green opened Ivy play with the win at Harvard last Saturday and are 9-2 overall. Ellie Blain, a second-team All-Ivy pick a year ago, leads Dartmouth with 119 kills while Amelia Gibbs has 69 (hitting .379) and Ava Roberts has 67. Makenzie Arent (235 assists) and Karen Murphy (179) hold down the setter spot, Defensively, Emma Engstrom (another second-team All-Ivy pick last year) has a team-high 163 digs while Taite Ryan has 101. Bomi Ogunlari—older sister of Penn freshman Feyi Ogunlari—leads Dartmouth with 42.0 blocks (11s/31a) while Gibbs has 29.0 (2s/27a). Five different players have a double-digit service ace total.
 
Dartmouth and Penn have one common opponent this season. Dartmouth hosted and beat Lehigh on September 9, 3-1, while the Quakers hosted the Mountain Hawks 11 days later and fell, 3-2.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn is 1-10 overall and trying to shake off an eight-match losing streak that continued last Friday with a 3-0 loss at Princeton to open Ivy play.
 
*Penn's record is a bit misleading, however; the Quakers have been pretty competitive in most of their matches. Of 31 sets lost this season, the Red and Blue have fallen 28-26 once, 25-23 four times, and 25-22 five times. They also have hit 20 and 21 three times each in set losses.
 
*Sophomore Ella Green has led Penn in kills each of the last two matches, setting a career high with 16 against Lehigh on September 20—hitting .250 in that match—and following up with nine at Princeton. She has reached double digits in kills twice in the last four matches, just missing a third at Princeton, and is third on the team with 66 kills this season (2.36 k/s).
 
*Green also finished one dig shy of a double-double vs. Lehigh and added two service aces and a block assist. She then had a block solo and block assist against the Tigers last Friday.
 
*Senior Madeline McGregor leads Penn with 92 kills (2.42 k/s) and has reached double digits twice in the last three matches and five times overall. She will be looking to rebound after recording just two kills last Friday at Princeton.
 
*Junior Madison Risch has 15 kills across Penn's last two matches (7 vs. Lehigh, 8 at Princeton) and is second behind McGregor with 69 kills for the season (2.09 k/s).
 
*Junior Jo Armstrong had gone the distance at setter in three straight matches—against Providence, Temple and Lehigh—before ceding that role back to freshman Anna Shohfi for the third set last Friday.
 
*Shohfi has played the most sets at setter this season (19) and leads Penn with 151 assists (7.95 a/s), good for fifth among Ivy players. Armstrong has 148 across 15 sets (9.87 a/s) and sophomore Sydney Ormiston—Penn's main setter last season—has 54 across 10 sets (5.40 a/s).
 
*Senior Elizabeth Ford continues to be opportunistic at the net offensively. She missed Penn's Sheraton University City Invitational due to a family commitment, but in the last two matches she has 11 kills while hitting .364.
 
*Freshman Abigail Reid, Penn's libero, stuck 33 digs against Lehigh—a season/career high and a staggering 6.60 assists/set—and enters this weekend second among Ivy League players and 44th nationally in digs per set (4.66). She has reached double digits in that category in all but one match this season.
 
*Reid also leads Penn with 11 service aces, followed by McGregor (9), Risch (6) and freshman Claire Deller (6). Don't be surprised to see sophomores Tatum DeMann and Kat Alexander brought on to serve through Penn's rotations.
 
*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.
 
*Junior Emerson Flornes had a career-high seven blocks (1s/6a) against Temple on September 17 and leads Penn with 21.0 this season (2s/19a). McGregor has 19.0 blocks (1s/18a) while Deller has a block solo and 15 block assists.
 
*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 11 matches to date: McGregor and Reid.
 
*Penn's trip to the Golden State three weekends ago—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.