The still-undefeated Oregon Ducks volleyball team beat the No. 29 St. Mary’s Gaels on Monday evening 3-0. The No. 9 Ducks came into the second match of their two-game home stand on the heels of a comfortable 3-1 victory over UC Santa Barbara last Wednesday.
Prior to their trip to Eugene, the Gaels ended a weekend trip to Manhattan, Kansas, with a 3-0 victory over unranked Utah State. The Gaels managed to earn a solid win even with the absence of team leader Missy White who is currently out with a herniated disk.
Similar to the match against UCSB, the Ducks jumped out to an early first-set lead 7-1. However, after several unforced errors and a general lack of consistency in the second half of the set, coach Jim Moore called timeout with the Ducks up 14-12. Following their timeout, the Ducks struggled to continue their strong start, even falling behind St. Mary’s several times. Leaning heavily on the arms of Liz Brenner and Alaina Bergsma the Ducks were able to come from behind and steal the first set 27-25.
The Ducks started slowly in the second set and found themselves in a 3-7 hole early. St. Mary’s middle blocker Gabby Jolly was everywhere on the court and through two sets had 11 kills to lead the Gaels, eventually finishing with 15. After looking up at St. Mary’s for almost the entirety of the set, a Liz Brenner ace tied it at 17 and following a huge spike by Ariana Williams, St. Mary’s coach Rob Growning called timeout with his squad down 21-19.  The set remained very competitive but eventually Williams sealed a 25-21 second set victory for Oregon with a kill at the net.
Bergsma, senior outside hitter, ended the match with 13 kills, and spoke of the issues that confronted the Ducks the first two sets.
“We’re a rhythm team and a lot of that comes from our serving and passing,” Bergsma said. “In the first two sets, our team was under a lot of pressure and thankfully, we were able to run our offense and score some points in transition.”
Turning point. The third set began hotly contested with the teams knotted at 5 and it looked like it would be another back-and-forth battle. However, the tides changed after an emphatic Bergsma kill following one of the longer rallies of the match to put the Ducks up 7-5, a lead they would not relinquish.
After falling behind 20-14, St. Mary’s called a final timeout to try to salvage the set, but the final kill delivered by Williams from Lauren Plum secured the set 25-18 and the match 3-0.
On the horizon.  The next test for the Ducks will be a trip to Portland to face the Portland State Vikings on Wednesday. The team will then return home to begin its conference schedule on September 19th against Oregon State.
After the game, head coach Jim Moore said he was pleased with the result of the match but stated necessary areas for improvement.
“Well, I’m pleased we’re undefeated but we have to have more enthusiasm, energy, something, whatever it is right from the beginning,” Moore said. “We got to come out like it’s fun and we didn’t look like that. We just kind of went out and did our thing and we got to be better than that.”