Wells Finishes Season with Tough Losses to NYU Poly and CCNY

Brooklyn, NY.  –The Wells Men's team finished their inaugaral season on Saturday with a toughly fought rematch against CCNY, losing 3-1 in 4 closely contested sets after a rough tangle with a solid NYU Polytechnic squad who downed the Express 3-0.

 The first match saw a strong attacking performance from Andy Jacobs (Millburn, NJ), who had 7 kills on 15 swings to lead the Express.  That attacking and some solid passing from freshmen Jesse Aki were the brightest spots of a match where the Express struggled to get going.

 The second match, however, brought more success for a Wells team who lost in straight sets to CCNY just a week ago and were eager to show they could compete.  Behind a 6 point serving run from Caleb Mannix (Chittenango, NY), Wells dominated the middle of the first set, leading by as much as 10 and holding off a late CCNY push to take the set 25-22.  However, the Express couldn't keep up the momentum, and when the CCNY serve game got hot in set 2 it was all Wells could do to keep things close.  Set three saw some strong attacking and defense, but still wasn't enough, and despite a 7 point deficit in the fourth set, Wells pushed all the way to the last point, but were denied the victory with strong kills from the CCNY middle.

 "Overall, if the NYU match was the end of our season, we would have been very unhappy with this trip" said coach Gary.  "All season we worked to improve every point, and that was our first real speed bump of the year.  I was proud to see them turn it around for the next match, and their first set performance was some of the best of the year."

 "In the end, we've got a very young team –all rookies, many with very little experience in volleyball at all, and for them to go out and take sets from teams who handily beat them earlier in the season shows that they're learning the game as fast as was possible.  It shows a lot of character to get up for the last match like they did, and they played some great team volleyball.  That's all we could ask for."