SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. -- Kate Giang had 16 kills and added 11 digs to lead Wellesley College to a 3-0 NEWMAC win over the Mount Holyoke College volleyball team in the Lyons' season finale on Saturday, with the visiting Blue winning by set scores of 25-17, 25-17, 25-13.
Wellesley rose to 13-8 overall and 6-5 in NEWMAC play. The Blue tied with Coast Guard for sixth place in the conference, and will take the sixth seed in next week's NEWMAC playoffs based on their head-to-head win.
The Lyons finished the 2024 campaign with a 13-13 record, their second season at .500 or better in the past three years, which follows a string of 26 straight seasons (1995-2021) with a losing record. Mount Holyoke finishes in 10th place among 12 teams in the NEWMAC with a 2-9 league mark.
Giang had double the kills of any other player, with 16 kills on 40 attempts (.250), while Sarah Jin had eight kills with no errors on 11 attempts (.727) and Rachel Xu posted seven kills with one error on 15 attempts (.400). The trio paced the Blue to a .254 team attack percentage to a .020 rate for Mount Holyoke. Kaija Kunze-Hoeg had a match-high 23 digs and Else Kunze-Hoeg had a match-high 20 assists.
Wellesley led the first set from end to end and by as many as 10 points at 23-13.
Mount Holyoke took its first lead of the day on a Giang attack error to start the second set, followed by an ace by junior Sadie Duffrin (Minneapolis, Minn.) that made it 2-0. Wellesley soon overtook the lead and made it 9-4 and 21-12 en route to a 2-0 match lead.
Wellesley fell behind 1-0 in the third set before assuming a 6-2 lead. Mount Holyoke closed within a point at 11-10, powered by back-to-back aces by senior captain Lucie Berclaz (Vaud, Switzerland), but Wellesley again pulled away, assuming a match-high 12-point lead on Giang's ace at match point.
Junior Madeline Barton (Brookfield, Wis.) had seven kills for Mount Holyoke, while Berclaz had five kills, four aces and 13 digs in her final match for the Lyons.
Sophomore Kyra Staples (Chatham, Ill.) led the Lyons with 16 digs and finishes the season with team records for digs (477) and digs per set (5.24).
Berclaz concludes her remarkable career at Mount Holyoke with 1,105 digs, second-most in team history. She also totaled 128 aces and 435 kills in her career, with all but seven kills occurring since her move to outside hitter as a junior.
