Weekly sports roundup (12/2-12/8)

After winning the Ivy League championship for the fourth straight year, the women's volleyball team fell to Utah Friday night in the first round of the NCAA championship. The 3-1 loss in State College, Pennsylvania, was closer than it sounds: the scores were 27-29, 25-15, 26-24, and 25-16 "in a match that was tied 25 different times and featured 11 lead changes," Yale Sports Publicity recounts. 

On the court elsewhere, men's basketball (5-4) split a pair of home games, losing to Byrant University, 72-64, on Wednesday before beating New Hampshire, 71-61, on Saturday.

The women's basketball team (4-5) defeated Bryant at home, 72-61, on the strength of 11 three-point shots on Wednesday. The women then lost to Army, 68-56, on Saturday. 

A scoreboard malfunction caused a late start, but Phoebe Staenz ’17 soon proved the board was working: she chalked up four goals as the women's ice hockey team (4-8-1) beat Providence, 5-1, on Friday. Three days earlier, the freshman forward from Switzerland was named the ECAC's Hockey Rookie of the Week.

The defending national champ men's ice hockey squad (6-3-3) took a beating Friday night at Ingalls Rink. Dartmouth scored three times in the first 10 minutes, a lead Yale couldn't erase. Fumed head coach Keith Allain '80: "We weren't smart, we didn't work and that's why we were down 3-0 after the first." Allain was happier the next night, after the Bulldogs came back in the third period to tie Harvard, 2-2, in front of a sold-out crowd. "Our energy was fantastic and our work ethic was really good," the coach said.

In the pool, men's swimming & diving defeated Boston University at BU on Saturday. The women's team splashed through a three-day invitational at Princeton, finishing second only to the Tigers, the defending Ivy champs.

The fencers traveled north to the Brandeis Invitational, where the men posted a 4-1 record on Sunday. The women went 2-3 for the weekend. Both squads resume competition in January.

The men's and women's track teams both launched with the Yale Season Opener at Coxe Cage on Saturday. The women racked up six first-place finishes, and Karleh Wilson ’16 set a school record in the shot put, in the unscored event. On the men's team, "13 Elis finished in the top five in their respective events," with strong performances by several freshmen, Yale Sports Publicity notes.