Written Story by Cuinn Huber

The Oregon Ducks volleyball team came into Sunday’s match against the Stanford Cardinal with high hopes of solidifying their top-eight rankings. Coming into this match the Ducks have a great record but have lost the past two Sunday home games they have played against Washington State and Arizona State respectively. However, in their last match against UC Berkeley, they swept and had a .406 hitting percentage. Optimism was high amongst the team and a victory against Stanford was very much a possibility.

The first set began well for Oregon when Mimi Colyer opened with a kill scoring the first point of the match. The set remained a fierce back-and-forth battle between the two teams with neither going on any long scoring streaks. Eventually, Stanford came out the victor winning set number one 25-23. Going into set two Oregon was hoping to reverse their set one fortune and Stanford was hoping to continue their momentum. This set was again close but saw far longer scoring streaks from both teams. In the end, an Attack error from Mimi Colyer gave Stanford the 25th and winning set point.

In set number three the ducks were able to get momentum onto their side. They were able to get four service aces, two by Mimi Colyer and one a piece from Gabby Gonzales and Daley Mclellan eventually winning the set 25-22. The fourth set was close until just over halfway through when Stanford went on a four-point scoring streak helped by two service aces from Elia Rubin, eventually winning Stanford the set 25-19 and the whole match as a result. Despite the Cardinal victory, the Ducks lead in every offensive statistic except for hitting percentage, however, they had 22 attack errors compared to Stanford’s 14.

Audio Story by Griffin Bowes