Hokies down lehigh in five sets

Josh Coover

Staff Writer

September 7, 2021

BLACKSBURG — Virginia Tech opened up the 2021 season against the LehighFriday afternoon. The Hokies (1-0) won the match against the Mountain Hawksin five sets; the final score of the fifth set was 15-11.

“I definitely think it was the energy and just taking what we did well in the first and second set as well as fixing what we did in sets three and four and just blending it all together and not getting down on ourselves especially when we were down three or four points,”outside hitter Elayna Duprey said. “There were a bunch of blocks from Griere [Hughes] and Angel [Robinson] especially in key moments and that definitely contributed.”

Lehigh began its 2021 campaign against Tech, where last season the Mountain Hawks finished 3-6 overall, with all games coming against conference opponents.

Virginia Tech's first two sets against Lehigh were back and forth to start out but the Hokies refused to take their foot off the pedal in the middle and towards the end of each set. In the first set, Tech led 21-11 before Lehigh called its second timeout of the set. VT’s three blocks helped them secure the victory by a score of 25-14.

In the second set, both teams went back and forth again until both the teams went into the media timeout, as Lehigh led 15-14. Coming out of the short break, Tech responded and took back over the lead 20-19, where the Mountain Hawks called their first timeout in the second set to refocus and regroup.

After both teams came back to the floor, VT went on a scoring tear with five straight points with the help of setter Talyn Jackson and right-side hitter Marisa Cerchio, who combined for two aces and one block to secure the win in set two.

“I needed us to be in this situation so they can understand that when they’re in tight situations, that they can get themselves out of it and it’s not just bloom and gloom,” head coach Marci Byers said. “So, it was good that we were able to do that. We made some key runs at the end of both of those sets to pull away.”

In the third set, Lehigh jumped out to a 5-2 lead over Tech and maintained the lead heading into the media timeout, leading 15-13. Tech later stormed back and took the lead 20-18, forcing Lehigh to use its first timeout of the third set. Back and forth both teams went once more until Lehigh secured the victory by a score of 26-24.

And in the fourth set, the story remained the same. Lehigh jumped out to an early 6-2 lead and later added on three more points to lead 9-4. The Hokies managed to cut the lead to four as they started to make a run for the win, but Lehigh's offense was just too much for a comeback attempt as the Mountain Hawks won the fourth set.

The fifth and final set started out very similar to sets one and two, both teams went back and forth as Tech gained an 8-6 lead heading into the final media timeout. VT never looked back, even when Lehigh burned two of their three timeouts, as it won the fifth set, 15-11, and the match, 3-2.

“We did rotate a little bit when we started game five because we knew it was a short game and we can make some more subs that we could not do in the first four sets,” Byers said. “Honestly, it was the kids getting back up and talking to each other even when there was a bad play.I think sometimes we start to go down when we make errors and we just can’t be that way. We are young and we got a mix of young and veteran kids and we got some excitement when we’re up but we have to learn how to win when the time is tough and that is what we did today.”