Langhorne, PA - Cairn hosted Brooklyn College and No. 3 SUNY New Paltz on Saturday where the Highlanders split their matches to go 1-1. The Highlanders first lost to the Hawks 3-1 (25-20, 13-25, 19-25, 22-25) and then took down the Bulldogs 3-0 (25-7, 25-4, 25-7).
Match 1: Cairn vs. New Paltz Andy Willits played his second match of the season from the opposite position and led the team with 17 kills and a .294 hitting percentage. On the defense,
Matthew Rhodes led the team with seven digs.
The Highlanders played very well to open their first match against the No. 3 New Paltz Hawks, winning the first set 25-20. Cairn limited New Paltz to just six kills in the opening game, while hitting 13 kills from their side of the court.
New Paltz secured the first point of the match but from there the Highlanders pulled ahead.
Josiah Buss collected Cairn's first kill followed by two straight aces by Willits. Buss then got the next two kills for Cairn and they had a 5-2 lead. Buss finished the match with 11 kills and a .316 hitting percentage.
Cairn never gave up lead after the first point and the Highlanders took the first set 25-20.
David Dager had another good match while subbing into the front row; Dager hit six kills with no errors.
Unfortunately New Paltz started the second set with a new lineup that threw off the Highlanders and the Hawks won 25-13 while taking advantage of Cairn's service errors.
The Highlanders played better in the third and fourth sets and kept their hitting errors to a minimum, but Cairn kept up the service errors to finish with 20 for the match. The Hawks were also able to hit 13 kills in the fourth set with one error to get past the Highlanders. New Paltz won the third set 25-19 and the fourth set 25-22.
Match 2: Cairn vs. Brooklyn The Highlanders took care of the Bulldogs in convincing fashion with a 3-0 sweep and were also able to make some lineup changes in the process. Cairn was led in attacking by
Matthew Rhodes, the usual libero, with 10 kills on 14 attempts. In the second and third sets,
Josiah Buss played in the setting position and collected 12 assists.
Nineteen of the Highlanders' points came from service aces in the match; Buss led with nine, followed by
Micah Godshall with five. Godshall also had seven kills in the match on 10 attempts.
Cairn held Brooklyn to just four kills in the match and 19 points total in the match. Three of those kills came from Ian Miranda, who also had one ace. Kevin Bautista led the Bulldogs in digs with five.
With the win and the loss, Cairn's overall record moved to 9-11 this season. New Paltz improved to 8-3 with two wins and Brooklyn College fell to 0-16 with their losses. The Highlanders will next host Rutgers-Newark on Wednesday, Mar. 4, to return to conference action.