PHILADELPHIA – The University of Pennsylvania volleyball team is on the road for the next three weekends, starting Friday when the Quakers make the short trip North to face archrival Princeton at the Tigers' Dillon Gymnasium.
 
Penn is on the outside looking in at a top-four spot in the standings heading into the second half of league play. The Quakers are two games behind Princeton, Brown and Yale who are tied for second place. The Red and Blue's next three opponents? The Tigers, the Bears, and the Bulldogs, all on the road. So moves are there to be made.
 
Game 18 – PENN (9-8, 3-4 Ivy League) at PRINCETON (10-5, 5-2)
Friday, Oct. 24 | 7 p.m. | Princeton, N.J.
Watch Live 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 Princeton
In a rivalry that dates to 1975, the Tigers have dominated in recent years including a sweep last month at The Palestra in Philadelphia, 3-0 (37-35, 25-21, 25-15). Penn earned a 3-1 win in the match played at Old Nassau last season; it was the Quakers' first victory over Princeton since 2015. A day later, the Tigers came back with a 3-1 win in Philadelphia in a match that was played in Rockwell Gym.
 
Penn and Princeton totaled 72 points in the first set of their first meeting this season, on September 26; the Tigers ultimately won the set, 37-35. It marked just the seventh time in program history the Quakers have played a set with that many points; the other six took place during an era when colleges played first-to-30 sets (2001-07). The most recent of those took place on November 12, 2005, Penn beating Columbia 38-36 in the first set of an eventual 3-0 win. Starting at 24-23 in last month's match, Penn fended off eight set points and Princeton fought off four before prevailing.
 
Friday's match marks a homecoming for Penn's new head coach, Tyler Hagstrom. He was an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Princeton for four seasons under the Tigers' current head coach, Sabrina King. During Hagstrom's time on Old Nassau the Tigers won three Ivy titles and made the NCAA Championship field three times. This will be his first time bringing a team to Dillon Gym since he left Princeton following the 2019 season.
 
Quaker Notemeal
*Penn won three straight matches by 3-0 scores from September 17-20 (over NJIT, Delaware and Saint Peter's). You have to go all the way back to the 2009 season to find the last time the Quakers won three straight matches by sweep (October 23-30 against Cornell, Columbia and Yale).
 
*In fact, eight of Penn's nine wins this season have come via the sweep with the only exception coming two weeks ago at Harvard (a 3-1 victory).
 
*Penn enters the weekend third nationally in digs per set (17.95), third in attacks per set (38.74), 11th in assists per set (13.36), and 15th in kills per set (14.16). Individually, freshman Addison Pollock was 11th nationally (third among first-year players) in digs per set (5.13).
 
*Among Ivy teams, Penn is tops in all of the above categories and second in points per set (17.16) behind only Ivy League leader Cornell (17.32). Individually, Pollock leads the league in digs per set and junior Zada Sanger is second in kills per set (3.52) behind only the Big Red's Eliza Konvicka (4.03).
 
*Speaking of Sanger, she was named Ivy League Player of the Week on September 22 after earning Tournament MVP honors at the Delaware Invitational. Her classmate, Bella Rittenberg, was named all-tournament at Delaware after she put down 12 kills (hitting .474) and added two digs and two assists in Penn's win over the host Blue Hens.

*Of the nine women who have played at least 19 of Penn's 26 sets so far in Ivy League play, just one is a senior—Anna Shohfi, who has played in 24 sets sharing setter duties with sophomore Emery Moore. Perhaps more impressively, four of the nine are sophomores and two are freshmen.
 
*Penn is in its first season under head coach Tyler Hagstrom. His hiring was late, coming just before the preseason on July 16 after previous head coach Meredith Schamun left the Quakers to become the associate head coach at the University of Illinois.
 
*Hagstrom came to Penn after a successful five-year run at Bucknell that included the Bison going 21-5 last year and setting a program record with 13 wins in Patriot League play. Despite only coaching five seasons at Bucknell, Hagstrom left as the program's all-time leader in win percentage (59-48, .551).
 
*In addition to putting down 164 kills so far this season—including a career-high 19 against Lafayette on September 13—sophomore Jenna Garner also has nine double-figure dig performances and four kill/dig double-doubles this season, the most recent coming on September 23 (13K/14D vs. Temple). She finished one kill shy of another double-double vs. Princeton (9K/13D), one dig shy vs. Brown (12K/9D), and two digs shy at Harvard (11K/8D). She followed up the Harvard performance with a career-high 21 digs the next night at Dartmouth. Garner also is third on the team with 14 service aces.
 
*Sanger leads the team with 204 kills and had reached double digits in that category in 12 straight matches (3.59 k/s in that span) before finishing just shy with nine in last Saturday's sweep of Ivy leader Cornell. Out of 16 appearances this season, Sanger has 13 double-digit kill games and two others with nine.
 
*Sophomore Adell Murray is hitting .315 for the season, but that number goes up to .342 if you take out her performance in the season opener against Colorado (99K-16E-243A since then). Murray has hit .330 in Penn's Ivy League matches (42K-5E-112A) and also leads the team with 35.0 blocks overall (6s/29a) including five last Friday against Columbia.
 
*Another sophomore, Ellie Siskin, has consistently filled the box score this season. She has 152 kills—including 14 at Dartmouth 13 vs. Brown and 11 vs. Princeton—78 digs and 22 block assists and leads the Quakers with 18 service aces.
 
*Freshman Haley Kerstetter has been an offensive weapon since the start of Ivy play, hitting a staggering .437 (45K-7E-87A) in Penn's seven conference matches. She had seven kills without an error on nine attacks last Friday vs. Columbia, 12 kills on 18 attacks without an error three weeks ago against Brown and put down 10 kills at Dartmouth. The freshman also has 30.0 blocks (8s/22a), second on the team behind Murray—her eight block solos lead the Quakers—and 13 service aces.
 
*Pollock, meanwhile, had 28 digs in Penn's five-setter at Dartmouth two weeks ago, a season/career high and her ninth time this season with more than 20. She is also second on the team in service aces (16) and was the Ivy League Rookie of the Week the week of September 15.
 
*Sophomore Moore has 462 assists so far this season, a 7.97 per-set average, while the senior Shohfi has 210 (4.77 a/s).
 
*Penn went 1-2 at the Charm City Classic, falling at Coppin State on Friday (3-2) and then splitting matches with Lafayette (a 3-0 win) and Towson (a 3-1 loss) on Saturday. Towson's win over Penn was its ninth in a row this season.
 
*Penn started the 2025 season on the right foot, going 2-1 at the Anteater Classic. The Quakers fell to Colorado to start the tournament, 3-0, but rebounded to sweep Fresno State and host UC Irvine.
 
*Garner and Murray were named to the Anteater Classic all-tournament team. Garner had 26 kills, hit .303 on the weekend, and added 34 digs with a pair of kills/digs double-doubles (11/18 vs. Fresno, 14/12 vs. UC Irvine). Murray had 24 kills and hit .281 on the weekend (21K-4E-43A, .395 in the two wins).
 
*Sanger also had a standout weekend offensively in her home state, finishing the three matches with a team-high 30 kills. That included a five-set run across the Fresno State and Irvine matches where Sanger put down 20 kills without an error.
 
*The trip to Irvine served as a homecoming for seven Penn players who hail from the Golden State: seniors Claire Deller (Del Mar) and Jalen Tennyson (Los Angeles); juniors Rittenberg (Fallbrook) and Sanger (Berkeley); sophomores Garner (Pasadena) and Hailey Hilsabeck (Lafayette); and freshman Taylor Roloff (Alameda).
 
*Penn made a massive leap last season under Schamun, going 13-10 overall and finishing Ivy League play at 7-7. In both cases, the win totals more than tripled from the previous season when the Quakers finished 4-20 overall and 2-12 in Ivy play.
 
*Even better: almost the entire core returns. Penn returns 98.2 percent of its kills, 94.0 percent of its blocks, 93.0 percent of its digs, and 98.7 percent of its service aces. The Quakers return four players who had more than 100 kills last year and three others who had more than 50; five players who finished with at least 100 digs; and six players who ended the campaign with more than 20 blocks. Penn also returns its top two setters.
 
*In looking at last year's stats, there were 11 women who played in at least 62 of Penn's 88 sets. Only one of those players does not return—Kat Alexander, who graduated after playing in 66 sets. And yet the Quakers still remain relatively young: of the remaining 10, only Abigail Reid (67) and Anna Shohfi (63) are seniors.
 
*Some historic wins last season: Penn won at Princeton on September 27, 3-1, the Quakers' first win over the Tigers since 2015. (In that match, Penn dropped the first set but won the next three.) One week later, the Quakers downed Brown 3-0 for their first win over the Bears since 2019. Finally, the Quakers swept Harvard last season, the first time that's happened since 2016.
 
*Three returning players have earned All-Ivy recognition at some point during their career. Sanger and Murray received honorable mention All-Ivy recognition after last season, while Reid earned honorable mention recognition following her freshman season in 2022.
 
*Shohfi and junior Lauren Van Wie are this year's captains.
 
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