Over the weekend, the Stony Brook women’s volleyball team headed up to Chicago to face off against DePaul, Bradley and Hampton at the DePaul Invite tournament. The Seawolves were able to start off there season on a positive note, taking two out of the three matches.
Stony Brook began the tournament with a Friday night matchup against DePaul. After dropping the first set of the match 22-25, the Seawolves responded with three consecutive match wins by the scores of 25-15, 32-30, and 25-22. Junior Melissa Rigo led the way for SBU delivering a team-high 15 kills. Redshirt senior Evann Slaughter also added 11 kills in her first game back on the court after suffering a torn ACL.
On Saturday morning, Stony Brook took on the Hampton Pirates, and were thoroughly dominated, as they were swept in three sets. In the first set the Pirates took the first four points, and never relinquished the lead. The second set was also dominated by Hampton, with Stony Brook trailing by as many as ten points. The Seawolves managed to score the first point of the third set, and that was one of the only two points they held the lead the entire match. In the end, the final score stood 25-18, 25-16, 25-19.
The Seawolves rebounded well, however, beating the Bradley Braves in a resilient five-set win. The two teams seemed to be closely matched, as they went to a fifth set with the combined margin of victory of nine in the first four sets. Stony Brook managed to close out well, not really allowing the Braves to mount a serious threat in the final frame. At the end, the score stood 22-25, 25-23, 25-23, 23-25, 15-11.
SBU will participate in another tournament this weekend when they take on Fairfield, Columbia, and Bucknell in the Columbia Invitational.
Joe Galotti contributed to this story