By Jacob Norling
September 22, 2023
 
(SAN RAFAEL, Calif.) Years from now the answer to a trivia question asking when Westmont won their first PacWest game can be answered with this: on Friday night, September 22, 2023, when the Westmont Volleyball team defeated Dominican in three sets.
 
After Westmont dropped their first pair of matches in their new conference home, the Warriors traveled down to San Rafael for Friday night's match where they would ultimately make history.
 
"I forget these things," laughed McGolpin when asked about the significance of the win, "but luckily I came back to a couple texts reminding me what had just happened. That's pretty cool. We're stoked, and we hope there's a lot more to come from a lot of our teams on campus."
 
In the first set Westmont built a comfortable lead towards the middle of the game, with Dominican calling a timeout trailing 18-13. Out of the timeout, however, the Penguins scored three consecutive points to back within a pair, forcing McGolpin to call a timeout of her own.
 
The Penguins stayed within a pair at 19-17, but then, a kill from Alexis Dennick and a pair of kills from Sara Krueger allowed Westmont to rebuild their advantage to 22-17. Moments later, both Krueger and Dennick went up for a set-ending block, putting Westmont on the board first with a 25-19 win.
 
In set two the two teams traded the first eight points of the game to a 4-4 tie, but then, the Warriors took off. A kill from Jessie Terlizzi caused Dominican to call timeout trailing 8-4, but the run by the Warriors did not stop there. Out of the timeout, a pair of kills from Dennick and Terlizzi continued the run, and a block from Krueger and Dennick put the finishing touches on a game-changing seven-point swing to put the team up 11-4.
 
The lead continued to grow for the Warriors, who were up 23-14 before kills from Krueger and Terlizzi finished the 25-14 win.
 
The third set saw the Warriors never trail in the contest, and the lead began to expand largely early. Initially, Westmont jumped out to an 8-3 advantage, before a three-point swing for the Penguins forced Westmont to call a timeout.
 
Following the stoppage, kills from Terlizzi and Taylor Distelberg allowed Westmont to rebuild their lead to 12-7. Later on, kills from Phoebe Minch and Dennick put Westmont up 17-11, and an ace from Kaili Hashimoto put Westmont up 19-12.
 
In the end, Distelberg's fourth kill of the night gave Westmont a 25-18 win, 3-0 sweep, and their first win in PacWest history.
 
"From the start to the end, we were on it tonight," said McGolpin. "Our hitting percentage was fantastic tonight, our passing was spot on, and our serving was tough. We did not let up, and it was really good to see from these women.
 
"The team did a great job with traveling the same day from this distance. We did something a little different, and started our warm ups a little earlier. I think it actually helped get the 'bus-legs' out of us. It was a solid start and finish to the day with no let up at all."
 
Individually, Minch led Westmont with 10 kills to go along with a .471 attack percentage, while Dennick hit.625 with six kills of her own. Defensively, Dennick also recorded five blocks, while Hashimoto and Ella Hosfeld each recorded six digs. Hosfeld also led the Warriors with 12 assists, while Shiner contributed with nine of her own.
 
"Phoebe anchored the passing for us," shared McGolpin, "and both she and Jessie were great on the outside with the kills. Our two middles were dynamic, again, with both passing and blocking. As a whole, it was a great team effort. If we pass well, we can run a lot, and we passed really well tonight."
 
The Warriors return to action on Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, where they'll take on Academy of Art at 2:00 p.m. Links to live coverage are available on the Westmont Athletics website.