HOUSTON – A young and relatively inexperienced University of Pennsylvania volleyball team faced a daunting task in its 2023 season opener on Friday morning.
 
The Quakers were on the home floor of Houston Christian University, the defending Southland Conference champion and 2023 preseason favorite in that league. Adding to it, the Huskies were playing their fifth match of the young season, including a 3-0 victory last night.
 
The results were maybe predictable. Putting three freshmen on the floor to start and playing without their only All-Ivy player from a year ago (sophomore Abigail Reid), the Quakers struggled to find momentum throughout the match and fell to the Huskies, 3-0. Set scores were 25-12, 25-19, 25-14.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn got 11 kills from freshman Zada Sanger in her collegiate debut, which was more than double any of her teammates. Sophomore Claire Deller added five kills—hitting .287 in the match (5-1-11)—while freshman Bella Rittenberg had four.
 
*Sophomore setter Anna Shohfi went the distance and had 20 assists in the match to go with six digs, a block assist, and three kills on five attacks (.600 hitting percentage).
 
*With Reid out of the match, freshman Elsa McDermott got the start at libero and led Penn with 17 digs. Sanger had nine, just missing out on a double-double, while Rittenberg had seven and senior Julia Bradshaw (making a return to her hometown) joined Shohfi with six.
 
*Deller was the only Quaker with a block solo in the match, and she also had a block assist along with senior captain Emerson Flornes, sophomore Jalen Tennyson, and Sanger.
 
*Flornes, Shohfi and Rittenberg had the Quakers' service aces in the season-opening match.
 
How It Happened
The first set was competitive for awhile as the teams were tied at 5-5, 6-6, 7-7, 8-8 and 9-9. A Sanger kill gave Penn a 10-9 lead, at which point HCU took off with the next six points in a row. A media timeout slowed the Huskies' momentum, as Sanger and Ella Green sandwiched kills around an HCU point out of the stoppage to make the score 16-12. However, it was all Huskies from there as they scored the next nine in a row to win the set, 25-12.
 
That momentum carried into the second set, the tournament hosts scoring six straight points early en route to a 9-3 lead. Penn got two of those back to 9-5, and got within four two more times at 12-8 and 13-9. HCU ratcheted up the pressure from there, though, using another six-point run to go in front 19-9. The Quakers showed life at 20-10, scoring five of the game's next six points, but the Huskies did enough to keep the Red and Blue at bay the rest of the way for a 25-19 win.
 
The third set followed a script similar to the first, the teams tying at 5-5, 6-6, 7-7 and 9-9 before HCU used a four-point run to get to 13-9. A Rittenberg kill was followed by a Flornes service ace to get Penn back within two at 13-11, but HCU scored the next two and three of the next four points to get a little bit of breathing room, then took the kill shot with a six-point run that turned a 16-13 lead into a 22-13 advantage. In all, it was a 9-1 Huskies run over the final 10 points of the match.
 
Up Next
Penn is back in action later today at the Molly Howard-Gerwig Memorial Tournament, facing the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley at 4 p.m. (5 p.m. EDT). The Quakers will conclude tournament play tomorrow against Arkansas State at 12:30 p.m. (1:30 p.m. EDT).