The UMass women’s volleyball team played a double header Saturday at the Clark center; they beat Keene St 3-1 and lost to Western Connecticut State in straight sets. This puts their season record at 13-16.

UMass started the day playing Keene State, a team that proved an even match for UMass in the first two sets, each team winning one. It looked like it was going five games when UMass, galvanized by a nasty Gina Torres spike broke it open in the third set with a 16-8 run that finished off the 3rd game 30-19. Down 2 games to 1, Keene State came on very aggressively in the fourth but UMass defense held and the Beacons broke Keene in the middle of the 4th and won the match decisively 3-1. Keene State was lead by Debbie Hughes who played particularly well, scoring a number of kills.

The next opponent on the day’s double header was Western Connecticut State, who had just finished their first game against UMass Dartmouth. Because of their lack of bench UMass had a disadvantage in long matches especially double headers. That is not to say that they did not hustle against Western Conn., but fatigue did take its toll on UMass. The match up with Western Connecticut was a tough one, Conn. had two 6-footers in Debra Senior and Cynthia Socoloskie and both of them played terrific on the net. In the first two games they took away much of the explosiveness of the UMass attack.

Western won the first two games, the second ensured by a 20-4 run, and by the end Umass looked tired. Umass came back in the 3rd game and went point for point with WCS driven by desperation. They played to win but eventually WCS eked out a lead and held on to it to finish the 3rd set 30-24. At 29-24 timeout was called after Lauren Chaves dove to the floor and was slow getting up. She was able to continue play for what turned out to be the last point of the match.

The Beacons got great matches out off all of their players with standout games from Gina Torres and Laurel Smith. The women’s volleyball team wraps up its season with its last home game which was yesterday and their final game of the regular season is at Wentworth Institute Saturday at 12 noon.