On a night where Andrew Luck and company played a lengthy triple-overtime game against USC, Stanford’s women’s volleyball faced a much shorter, three-set match against a motivated UCLA team.
No. 6 UCLA women’s volleyball completed their season sweep of their biggest conference competition this weekend, sweeping No. 5 Stanford on Saturday night, after upsetting No. 2 Cal in four sets the night before.
The Bruins dealt the Golden Bears their only loss of the season at Haas Pavilion, and Rachael Kidder played a big part in it. The junior outside hitter posted 22 kills and added 16 more against Stanford on Saturday, leading her team on both nights.
“(Rachael)’s always our go-to player,” coach Michael Sealy said. “When she’s on, we’re on. She’s definitely the catalyst for what we do.”
Kidder emphasized the importance of having the correct attitude, especially against elite opponents in raucous arenas.
“I think it’s definitely a mindset, from the beginning of the game we wanted to come out as strong as possible and let them know that we were ready to play, and I think we kept that mindset the whole game, and personally I kept it and that helped me to be successful,” she said.
UCLA came back from a 6-4 deficit to win the first set against Cal 25-17. UCLA looked poised to steal the second set, but Cal scored six of the last seven points to close out the set and even the score.
The momentum was back and forth, but junior outside hitter Tabi Love and freshman middle blocker Zoë Nightingale helped the Bruins out in the clutch on Friday; Love contributed 14 kills and Nightingale stepped up again, hitting a career-best .421 and netting 10 kills. Love and Nightingale also combined for eight kills in the final set.
Nightingale and the Bruins had more support against Cal than they usually do on the road; Nightingale’s hometown friends, family and even the volleyball team from her high school were in attendance.
“It was really fun to see all the people from my school and hometown people. I think having that kind of support there really helped the team,” Nightingale said. “We had a lot of people there.”
The Bruins were able to close out the match against Cal after losing the second set despite the hostile atmosphere of Haas Pavilion and the large crowd.
“The crowd was crazy. It’s one of the loudest gyms to play in because the band is really close to you and the students are doing a lot of heckling. It was a really loud, obnoxious crowd, but I think we reacted pretty well to it,” Kidder said.
The Bruins broke an 11-year old record when they beat the Cardinal the next night; the last time UCLA swept Stanford on the season people were just getting over the fear of Y2K.
Stanford got an early lead over UCLA at first, and the first two sets were decided by a combined four points. However, the Bruins blew out the Cardinal 25-10 in the last set to silence the Stanford faithful amassed in Maples Pavilion.
“We were down (in the first two sets) and we came back for the win. They were both really tight games, really exciting. It’s hard not to get caught up in the emotion of it. I think we stayed calm and then in the third game I don’t really know what happened but we destroyed them,” Kidder said with a laugh.
Sealy was positive about the team’s performance, but added that there are always things they can improve on.
“Our emphasis is always the same; we’ve got to keep getting better and figure out what our identity is. I think the girls are a lot tougher and a lot better than sometimes they think they are, and it’s about taking that confidence and putting it on the court,” he said.