The SUNY Buffalo State women’s volleyball team hit the ground running at its home opener on Tuesday, Sept. 9, beating Medaille in three sets, 25-19, 25-16 and 25-20.

“My mindset was going in and beating Medaille in three,” said head coach Mariah DePeters.

The match marked the fourth consecutive game that the Bengals have beaten their opponent in three sets. The team has not lost a set in over two weeks.

During the first set, both teams appeared to be evenly matched. There were no short rallies and neither team led by five or more points at any time during the set. As the match went on, Buffalo State’s offense began to take over. They began finding and targeting the weak areas of Medaille’s defense.

The Bengals did not go into the game unprepared. After scouting and studying the way Medaille set up their offense, defense and rotation at the Golden Flyer Invitational, DePeters and her team knew exactly how to be successful.

“Having game preparation is always helpful, going into any game.” senior Sam Parente said. “It made our jobs a lot easier knowing where they were going to hit and how they were going to return the ball.”

Junior Delaney Laper had 11 of the team’s 49 digs, junior Jennifer Cecchettini had 24 of the team’s 29 assists and Parente had 12 of the team’s 34 kills.

“We knew what kind of defense they ran,” DePeters said. “We know what kind of offense [they have], so we had a game plan going in against them.”

Although the Bengals do not play again until the Sept. 19, they are fully aware that it is not time to sit back and relax.

“We have a lot of experience on the team,” DePeters said. “Having upperclassmen is definitely good in the long run when it comes to playing tougher competition. There are lot of things we need to work on and those are types of things we’re going to be practicing.”

Junior outside hitter Hannah Renaldo is fully aware of how the team is going to make it big this year.

“Beating everyone definitely helps.” Renaldo said, “We’ve just got to take it one step at a time, one game at a time.”

Buffalo State is heading out to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 19 to compete in the Carnegie Mellon Tournament.

“Right now it’s all about determination,” Parente said. “We all have it and we all want to be successful. We are confident but we have a hard season ahead of us. We just have to keep pushing ourselves and keep proceeding to our goals.”

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