ALFRED, NY – The Alfred University women's volleyball team ended a three-year drought of not winning an Empire 8 conference match by besting Hartwick College in four sets, 14-25, 25-15, 25-23, 25-23 on Saturday afternoon in the McLane Center.
 
This is the first home Empire 8 win for the Saxons in over six years and the first Empire 8 win since the Saxons topped Utica College back on October 22, 2011 in three sets. The match also snapped an eight-match winless streak since Alfred defeated Morrisville State College 3-1 in its final September match.
 
Freshman Aubrey Totsline (Rochester, NY/Fairport) led a strong run in the Saxons' first set win of the day when she highlighted a 10-0 run with four service aces, three of which were in succession of one-another. That run gave the host of the Empire 8 Conference Tournament and Dig Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Day a 17-7 lead as Hartwick failed to put together more than three consecutive points during the remained of the match.
 
Alfred and Hartwick battled back-and-forth for the remaining two sets, with neither side having more than a seven-point lead. The Saxons did have a seven-point lead in the third with a score of 16-9 after Totsline assisted on two kills by sophomore Mary Lou Patnaude (Burnt Hills, NY/Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake) and one finish from junior Chelsea Pietrzykowski (Canandaigua, NY/Canandaigua) while sophomore Valerie Cardillo (Webster, NY/Webster Schroeder) added an ace before a Hartwick timeout.
 
After the minute break, the Hawks responded with a 5-0 run capped by Rosa Maun's ace with the rest coming from attack errors and one ball handling mistake, bringing the visitors within two, 16-14.
 
The two sides exchanged blows until the score stood with an Alfred, 24-20 lead when Hartwick composed a last ditch effort and scored three, unanswered points before freshman Jacquelynn Hicks (Greenville, NY/Greenville) connected off a Totsline set for the set-winning kill.
 
Neither team seemed to be gaining much ground in the fourth and final set despite the Saxons having control of the majority of the match. That was until the Hawks caught up, tied and then took the lead 23-22 off of kills from Kayla Baril and Christine Confer and a service ace from Baril.
 
The Saxon response to this threat of going into a fifth set: repossession of the ball off a Confer attacking error and junior Brianna Dudick (Somers, NY/Somers) serving twice that ended in another attack error for the Hawks by Alyssa Zeitler and an attack that failed to get pass the arms of Pietrzykowski and Heather D'Andrea for the win.
 
Totsline finished the second match with six aces, 32 assists, eight digs and one kill. Patnaude posted a team-high 10 points from 10 kills and added 15 digs and two assists. Pietrzykowski and Hicks had eight and seven kills respectively while matching each other with two assisted blocks. Dudick also posted six finishes.
 
D'Andrea recorded three block assists along with two kills.
 
The morning match did not go the way the Saxons had hoped for, having fell to Empire 8 conference foe, Houghton College in three sets, 15-25, 22-25, 14-25.
 
Totsline added one ace to her Saturday total as well as 17 assists. Hicks was the only Saxon to hit double-digit scoring with 10 points from nine kills and two block assists. Senior Taylor Kiernan recorded a game-high 19 digs in the morning loss.
 
The split now makes the Saxons 5-22 overall and ties them with the Hawks with a 1-7 Empire 8 mark. Hartwick falls to 8-19 overall. Houghton topped Hartwick in the middle match of Saturday's events in three sets giving them a conference record of 5-3 while totaling a 15-10 record so far in 2014.
 
The Saxons will next travel to Hamburg, NY to face the Hawks of Hilbert College on Tuesday, October 28 at 7:00 pm before the final tournament of the season at Houghton College in Houghton, NY where they face the host Highlanders, the Bengals of Buffalo State and the Red Dragons of SUNY Cortland.