Maddie Moran
Sports Editor
This past Saturday, Oct. 26, the Fighting Scots volleyball team won their highly anticipated senior day game against the Kenyon Owls. The Scots took an early lead, taking the first 2 sets by deficits of 14 and 9, respectively. After a close third set, Wooster powered through the fourth, thriving off of the energy from the crowd and their hunger to outperform their competitors. This victory marks the team’s first conference win and head coach Sarah Davis’s 250th career win at The College of Wooster.
“I think going into senior day, everyone was on the same page of playing to highlight the senior class and give us the day we’ve been waiting for,” said Lucy Kinser ’25. “The energy in the gym was contagious, it really did fuel our drive and propelled us to play at a higher level. Seeing all of the support in the stands from fellow student athletes to family and WOOVB (Wooster Volleyball) alumni… We were all overwhelmed with support. Seeing our whole team from 2022 make it a priority to celebrate us yesterday just goes to show how special the culture of this program is.”
With the season nearing its end and the senior game traditions ringing true for another year, including honoring the seniors with their families on the court and the bagpipers playing them in, this was a big match with a lot of moving parts. Going into this Kenyon matchup, the Scots knew they had to focus on winning 2 of the next 3 conference games to enter tournament play.
“To be honest, my senior day didn’t feel as hectic as I thought it would. Everything was being handled by either coaching staff, underclassmen teammates, or parents,” said Amelia Mitchell ’25. “The only thing I had to do was focus on the game and celebrate being a senior. The practices leading up to this game were some of our best and most productive. We all had a terminator mindset when we stepped out onto the court, ready to kill the ball.”
Despite some errors in the second set, dragging the score to a close 11-10, Wooster turned the whole set around, going on scoring runs led by Catherine Muzilla ’28 and Emma Fleck ’27 as the servers. Fleck’s run, scoring 6 consecutive points, was attributed to not only her consistent serving but also kills by Tamara Turner ’25, Olivia Kitchen ’25 and Izzy Cozzie ’26. Muzilla walked away with 3 of the 9 Wooster aces of the game.
“Going into the game, one of our goals was to serve them really tough because their passing average was really bad, so that was one of our strategies and I think it worked. We kept them out of system a lot and they didn’t get very many balls on target,” said Turner.
Wooster kept the score tight in set 3, but came up just short of the sweep: 25-21. “We are a team that thrives off competition and seeing that they wanted to fight more, made us want to fight more. We didn’t see that until after the third set, but a lot of the drive was from fighting to grab some more energy,” said Kitchen. Highly motivated to avoid going to five sets, the Scots regained their control over the game and closed it off, narrowly defeating the Owls in the fourth: 25-23.
“We have a history of letting our foot off the gas a little bit once we’ve won 2 sets and we got it back in our face. No matter if they’ve won 1 game or 12, you can’t let up,” said Turner. “I think that’s what we did. We put it back in our minds that we have to give it to them every single point and not let up, or we’re going to go to five sets, which almost happened.”
All 4 seniors made this their game, leading in kills and digs. Turner and Mitchell came through with 16 and 14 kills respectively, followed by Cozzie and Jordan Laraway ’27 with 8 each. Kitchen charted 7 of her own, having the highest hitting percentage of the game. Kinser contributed a game-high 19 digs as the libero with Turner and Muzilla adding on 14 and 10, respectively. Along with her 2 aces, 14 kills and 14 digs, Turner was also credited with 2 blocks and 2 block assists.
Mitchell, a recurring presence at the net, showed her hustle in the back row, diving for every ball that infiltrated Wooster’s side of the court. “Looking at the stats, it says she had 4 digs, but those digs were very crucial to the plays. I think that was a really big part of the team’s energy and the game overall because we’ve all been working, but that showed that we wanted it bad,” said Kitchen.
“Offensively, that was the best game we’ve ever had. When we talk about statistics, all of our hitters went well into the positives. We did a great job terminating early on in the game and making our presence known from the start,” said Kinser. “I could fully trust anyone up there to put the ball down, and Emma [Fleck] did a great job of seeing that and mixing up our offense and keeping Kenyon’s defense on their toes. Defensively, our block on the net made the back row’s work pretty easy. We were scrappy and adjusted accordingly to certain Kenyon players’ ‘go-to’ attack.”
Cheer on the Scots at their last home game of the year against Wilmington on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m.