The volleyball team took on two of the better teams in the NESCAC this weekend in Hartford, playing Trinity (10-7) on Friday and Amherst (16-4) on Saturday. After defeating Williams last weekend, Wesleyan had a chance to capture its first outright Little Three crown in 17 years with a win over Amherst, but the team fell to both opponents and thus will share the title with Williams and Amherst for the second consecutive season.

“The Amherst loss was hard because of how close the match was and what was at stake,” said Laura Yim ’13, “but our goal moving forward is to close out the regular season strongly and position ourselves for a run at the NESCAC tournament.”

On Friday, the team came out strong against Trinity, dictating the pace of the game with a combination of hard hitting and finesse, which led to a 25-19 win. In the second set, the Bantams answered Wesleyan’s challenge, and pulled out a 25-21 victory. The third and fourth frames were extremely close and well played, but unfortunately Trinity proved to have a slight edge, narrowly taking the third 25-23 and the fourth 26-24 to close out the match.

On Saturday, Wesleyan took on rival Amherst with the hope of capturing an outright Little Three title for the first time since 1992. The two teams had faced off just over a month ago in a thrilling match that went down to the wire, with Amherst winning 16-14 in the fifth frame. Wesleyan, looking to avenge that loss, came out extremely strong in the match on Saturday, taking the first set 25-19 and the second set 25-20. The Cards appeared to be on their way to easily capturing the match and the title, but the Lord Jeffs had other plans, staging an impressive comeback to take the next two sets 25-19 and 25-18. For the second time this season and third time in their last five matches, the teams headed to a fifth and deciding set, and just like in the teams’ last match, the Lord Jeffs had just enough to overcome the Cards, taking the frame 15-10 to secure a three-way tie for the Little Three title.

Although the results this weekend were disappointing, there were some great individual performances. Leading the offense was Casey Reed ’12, who had 25 kills on the weekend, and not far behind was Ashley Farrow ’10 with 19. Alissa Santucci ’12 had a good all around weekend, racking up 17 kills and 34 digs in the two matches. Lesley Faulkner ’11 lead the offensive charge against Amherst and amassed a team-high 12 kills in the match. Freshman Laura Volgenau had a breakthrough weekend, getting 12 kills and a team-high nine blocks in the two matches. Setter Ellie Healy ’10 was her usual steady self, racking up nine kills, 30 digs, and 81 assists on the weekend. Junior libero Ruby Hernandez led the Cards’ defensive efforts with 50 digs on the weekend.

The team returns to action this Tuesday, taking on Rhode Island College in Silloway Gym at 7:00.