Women’s volleyball (2-1, 0-0 Ivy) set the court ablaze in their first appearance of the 2025 season, sweeping Bryant University (2-4, 0-0 American East) 3-0 to kick off the Ocean State Cup on Friday. Brown followed up their dominant season opener with a split performance on Saturday, losing their first game against Providence College (3-3, 0-0 Big East) by a margin of 3-0 but trouncing the University of Rhode Island (2-4, 0-0 Atlantic 10) to end the tourney.
By the competition’s conclusion at Providence College’s Alumni Hall late Saturday evening, three teams had each racked up two victories and one loss: Brown, Bryant and Providence College. Down to a three-way tiebreaker, the overall victory was awarded to the Friars, who finished the tournament with two 3-0 sweeps, and one 3-2 loss.
“Our performance this weekend was good,” Head Coach Taylor Virtue wrote to The Herald. “We certainly have a lot of work to do to polish our systems and tempo, but overall I am encouraged with what we were able to do this weekend.”
Entering this season, the Bears are looking to improve on last year’s 11-14 record and climb the ranks of the Ivy League. The Bears placed third in preseason polling, trailing behind only Yale and Princeton, the Ivy League announced on Aug. 27.
“We have a handful of goals for this season, but the one that matters the most is winning an Ivy League Championship,” Virtue wrote. “Preseason was awesome and we were able to prioritize both hours in the gym and recovery, which has allowed us to head into our competition season with a full and healthy roster.”
When Brown finally took to the court against Bryant on Friday afternoon, they played without the rust of a months-long off-season. Instead, winning three consecutive sets — 25-12, 29-27 and 25-21 — the Bears demonstrated that they were prepared, in sync and ready to fight.
Mariia Sidorova ’26, who finished last year’s season with a team-high 335 kills, led Bruno’s offensive surge. For three consecutive sets, she hounded the Bulldog defense, spearing through their armor with 14 total kills.
Sophia Wolfson ’28 and Ally Panzloff ’27 bolstered Bruno’s offense, adding 11 kills each. In addition to the Bears’ offensive flurry, Brown delivered a strong defensive performance, outblocking Bryant 6-2 and winning the battle for digs 43-34.
Despite Friday’s triumph, when the Bears returned to Alumni Hall on Saturday morning to face Providence College, it was as if every ounce of firepower they deployed the previous day had been captured in a bottle and thrown in their faces. Brown was outscored, outsmarted and outplayed, leading to a 3-0 loss.
In two of the sets, the Bears fell by double digits, suffering a 25-14 defeat in the first set and a 25-12 loss in the third. Only the middle set provided any hope for Brown.
Spurred by effort more than anything else, the Bears outworked the Friars, racking up more attempts and kills in the second set. But ultimately, Brown was held back by their own mistakes, and following one too many errors, Bruno lost 25-21.
But just an hour and a half later, the Bears swarmed the court with new and reinvigorated energy. Sidorova set the tone early and claimed Bruno’s first point. URI fought valiantly throughout all three sets, but the Bears performed meticulously, exploiting the holes in the Rams’ defense and chipping away at their endurance.
Clinching the first set 25-19, Brown ran it back in the second set, claiming another 25-19 victory. The third set was the most contested one of the game, with Brown trailing 20-18 as the match wound down to the final stretch.
Thanks to kills by Panzloff and Hannah Flannery ’26, Brown was able to tie the game, but as both teams approached the 25-point margin, URI held the edge. For a dangerous moment, the Bears found themselves trailing 24-23, staring at a possible URI victory.
Then, Wolfson stepped up.
Expertly dismantling the Rams’ defense, she scored a game-saving point, tying the match at 24-all. In extra points, Panzloff, assisted by Julia Kakkis ’28, reclaimed a Bruno lead, and with it all on the line, Wolfson took the final shot, cementing a 26-24 Brown win.
“There were two keys that allowed us to beat both Bryant and URI,” Virtue explained. “We served very well, which created a lot of predictability from our opponents and secondly, our offense was firing on all cylinders.”
In the matches that the Bears won, they averaged more than 16 kills-per-set, “which is far and above (their) kills-per-set goal,” according to Virtue.
“During the Providence (College) match we struggled to find steadiness in first contact, both serving and passing which created a much less efficient offensive stand for us,” she added
The Bears will next compete in a weekend triple-header in Orlando, Florida. They will kick off the competition with a Friday afternoon match-up against Florida Atlantic University, followed by a 12 p.m. game against Arkansas State University on Saturday and a 1p.m. contest against University of Central Florida on Sunday.
“Next week we will be facing a much higher level of competition and we are incredibly excited for that,” Virtue concluded. “Our team is hungry to learn and get better after this weekend and we will be prepared to go to battle on Friday.”
Lydell Dyer is a sports editor for The Herald. A junior hailing from Bonn, Germany, Lydell is studying nonfiction English and political science, and if he's not off "making words sound pretty," you can find him lifting heavy circles at the Nelson.
