The St. Lawrence volleyball team lost to the Red Dragons of Cortland in five sets to close out their regular season on Saturday afternoon in Canton, N.Y.

Vivian Zymeck led the Saints first set offense, with four kills on six swings, but it was Cortland that closed the set scoring six out of the last seven points to take the 25-21 win.

The Saints came back to lead the match 2-1 by taking the next two sets 25-20 and 25-23 behind the offense of their two senior outside hitters Annika Kreppein and Natalie Piper. The pair, along with Zymeck accounted for 35 of the Saints 46 points through three sets.

The Red Dragons evened the match at two sets apiece by jumping out to an early league in the fourth. A seven point run gave them a 19-7 lead, and they were able to finish with a 25-12 win.

Both teams were fired up as the fifth and final set went underway. Cortland led 10-9 but a Piper kill evened the score. She rotated to the backrow and a service ace gave St. Lawrence back the lead. A Kreppein kill assisted by Allie Posnick capped a three point run to give the Saints the 12-10 lead. Cortland scored the next two to tie the match at 12. Each team had a successful side out to push the tie to 13 apiece, but the match ended anticlimactically with an attack error and a rotation violation on the Saints to give Cortland the final set 15-13.


"That was easily our best match of the season," said head coach Shelly Roiger. "At the end of the day, we weren't as sharp as we needed to be in the fifth set and we had some miscues throughout the entire set that led to the result on the scoreboard.This loss definitely stings. Even though we played great, we had some controllables that we didn't execute and hand very well. There is no doubt in my mind that the team that the team will bounce back from the disappointing finish and hope that the ending doesn't negate their effort or quality of play in the previous two hours because it really was a great volleyball match. We will handle this adversity with class and rise above stronger than before. At the end of the day, we were a better volleyball team at 5 p.m. than we were at 2:30 today."

Piper led all players with 18 kills, 19 digs, and four aces. Courtney Benson had six blocks for the Saints and Posnick had 34 assists.

Cortland was led by Olivia Doorley's 16 kills and Alexa Guedez's eight blocks.

The Saints closed their regular season winning ten out of twelve matches, and prior to today's match honored the five members of the Class of 2022.

Records: St. Lawrence (16-10), Cortland (24-3)
Up next: Liberty League Semifinal vs RIT on November 5 at 4 p.m. in Rochester, N.Y.