The Women’s Volleyball team had their first Patriot League game of the season Friday night at Reitz Arena against Navy. Lots of fans showed up to support the team this past Friday, decked out in Barbie outfits for Barbie Night, and cheering for the Hounds until the very end. The crowd brought a ton of energy to the environment, adding to the intensity of the game.
Loyola showed promising skill and got so close each set, only losing by a couple of points. Navy won the first two sets, 25-22, and the Hounds won the third set 25-18. In the final set, Navy won the game by just 2 points, 25-23. It was a very suspenseful game and even though the loss left fans disappointed, this does not mean all hopes are tarnished.
Navy is on an eight-game win streak, only having lost one game so far. Loyola did a great job keeping up with Navy in each set they played. Team captain, Lauren Link ’24, decided to look on the bright side after their first loss.
She said, “Navy is a great team, I mean they beat Maryland which is like a big-time team so they’re like super up there. I’m proud of how we competed, I just feel like it’s just little things here and there that we can improve.”
Alija Pittenger has been the head coach for the Women’s Volleyball team since 2015. Before that, she was a head coach for the NCAA Division I. In 2018, she led Loyola’s team to qualify for the Patriot League Championships for the first time. So, how can they improve going forward throughout the rest of the season?
Pittenger said, “We want to focus on those little things that we need to do a little bit better. Just clean up our side of the court mostly, but there’s a lot of good teams in the Patriot League, and top to bottom, there’s going to be some really good competition, so we better get on that quick.”
Loyola’s next competition is against Army West Point, who has an overall score of 5-6 with a win streak of three. Compared to Navy, Loyola and Army have around the same amount of wins and losses, which levels it out.
After the Navy game, Link said, “A lot of the things we were talking about this season are dictating the tone and how we want to play. I feel like this game made us learn a lot about what we need to get better at as the Patriot League goes on since this was the first game of the conference.”
Their next home game is set for Sept. 29 at 7:00 p.m. against Lehigh University. And if the fans are anything like the game against Navy, morale should be high. We will see if they continue to cheer loudly, no matter how the game goes.
Gwen Berger ‘27 said, “Even though we’re losing right now, it’s still great and they’re going to turn it around. We love our Hounds!”
