Harvard Whallops New York Ivies in Road Matches

Cruising home from Harlem on Saturday, the Harvard women’s volleyball team must have had Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” playing over the team bus’ speakers.

The Crimson (6-9, 2-2 Ivy) played to a tune of a 3-0 shutout of Columbia on Saturday after outperforming Cornell 3-1 during the first leg of its New York road trip.

As the song goes, “Start spreading the news.”

The dominant victories come at a crucial time for Harvard, which started off its Ivy League season with losses to Dartmouth at home and in Durham.

“We went [into Cornell] having the mindset that this isn’t a dress rehearsal—we’re in Ivies now,” sophomore Anne Carroll Ingersoll said. “I think that losing to Dartmouth twice was really an eye opener.”

The new mindset paid off, and Sinatra’s lyrics sum up the rest: “I’m gonna’ make a brand new start of it—in old New York.”

The Crimson will attempt to keep the beat going this weekend at home against the “Killer P’s” of Princeton and Penn.

HARVARD 3, COLUMBIA 0

From the start of the first frame in Levien Gymnasium, it was clear that Harvard’s offense would have little trouble taming the Lions (10-7, 1-3).

Early kills from co-captain Chelsea Ono Horn, sophomore Sandra Lynne Fryhofer, and sophomore Anne Carrol Ingersoll capitalized on Columbia’s troubles serving to give the Crimson a 9-5 lead. The Lions committed 12 serving errors on the night.

Later on, the home team clawed back to tie it at 18-18, but another successful strike from Ono Horn prevented Columbia from taking its first lead in the frame. From there, freshman Taylor Docter unleashed four kills to propel Harvard to a 25-20 victory.

The Crimson hit for a season-high .357 and committed only eight errors on the night. Fryhofer was nearly flawless, hitting for .818 with nine kills and no errors. Five players racked up six kills or more, including 11 from Ingersoll. Facilitating the attack was senior Lily Durwood, who dished out 36 assists.

“Our offensive was out of control,” Ono Horn said. “It was all silly how well we were hitting.”

Although the Lions won the first point of the frame, consistent serving from sophomore Christine Wu and Ono Horn set the scene for a steady accumulation of kills from Docter, Fryhofer, and Ingersoll to lift Harvard to an 11-5 advantage. This time, there would be no resurgence on the other side of the net, and the Crimson led by at least four points throughout the set. Sophomore Mikaelle Comrie notched a kill to end the set at 25-17.

Nine Lions errors early on in the final set put Harvard up, 11-7. Although Columbia regained its footing, the Harvard offense was unrelenting and kept the Lions in a deficit that lasted the entire set, until the shutout was completed by another Columbia service.

HARVARD 3, CORNELL 1

Arriving in Ithaca, the Crimson was hungry for a win. Each of the previous two weekends featured 3-0 shutouts at the hands of Ivy foe Dartmouth that came as a disheartening start to the Ivy season.

The emotion from the previous losses translated to a dominant performance against Cornell in which Harvard proved too much for the Big Red (5-10, 2-2) to handle.

“We played with a lot of passion,” Ono Horn said.

The Crimson put up nine blocks to Cornell’s two, although the lockdown on defense was not fully invoked until the second frame.

Harvard came out onto the court of Newman Arena with all cylinders firing and quickly established a 4-0 lead. The Big Red recomposed itself and assembled an 8-2 run to get back in the game. With the momentum in its favor, Cornell cruised on to a 25-21 set win, refusing to yield the lead once.

“We blocked them a lot and kept them out of their system with our aggressive serving and defense,” Ono Horn said. “As long as we’ve got that, were going to win a lot.”

Something must have clicked during the several minutes in between the first set and the second, as the Crimson took to the court again and shut down the Big Red attack. Over the course of the next three frames, Harvard held Cornell to attack clips of .188, .147 and .000, respectively, to claim each set en route to its first Ivy League victory.

—Staff writer Emmett Kistler can be reached at ekistler@fas.harvard.edu.