The University of Rhode Island women’s volleyball team extended its losing streak to six games over the weekend after dropping a pair of matches against George Washington University.
It was complete domination from the Revolutionaries in the first match. The most competitive set was the second, but even that was an 8-point difference. Fourth-year Emily Sawyer led URI with six kills.
Attacking errors were once again a huge problem for Rhody. They finished with 24 kills and 23 errors for a hitting percentage of .010; the Revs had a hitting percentage of .333.
Third-year Dakota Henry was awarded the game ball from the match against Fordham University on Wednesday for recording her 1,000th dig of her career. Henry added 11 more digs on Saturday and is now ninth all-time in program history.
Rhode Island responded in a much more competitive fashion on Sunday, but the results were still the same.
URI forced the first set to extra points but came up short in a 30-28 loss. The second set was the same story as Rhode Island was defeated 28-26. The Revs completed the sweep in the third set, 25-21.
“It’s just such a hard thing to turn around a program in such a good conference,” Sullivan said. “Look at [first-year] Cara Richter; she comes in, and she’s already got 300 kills for the year. She is going to be a five-year starting piece for this program.
After getting swept in both matches, URI was eliminated from postseason contention. The Rams are now 1-13 in Atlantic 10 play, with their only conference win coming against Duquesne University back on Oct. 16.
“You guys better have fun beating us now,” Sullivan said. “In a few years we’re going to be on par with you.”
Other A10 schools have more resources for their volleyball programs, according to Sullivan. URI is one of the only programs in the conference without two full-time assistants. Many other schools that allocate more resources to volleyball don’t have to support football, unlike URI.
URI still has a chance to improve its conference record with four games remaining in the regular season.
“We truly haven’t played a team so far this year that we haven’t felt that we can compete with,” Sullivan said. “We beat Duquesne [University] and took Duquesne to five, and Duquesne beat [the University of] Dayton.”
Rhode Island sits at 6-20 on the season and will look to close out the year with at least one more conference victory.
