The College of Staten Island Men’s Volleyball club team hosted its first ever match against visiting St. Joe’s College (Brooklyn). Both teams played three extremely evenly matched sets in CSI’s inaugural match, which ended in the home team taking the win by the narrowest of margins for their first win in as many tries. CSI battled through some up and downs and pulled out the win in straight sets, 25-23, 25-23, and 25-22 and were able to show great poise at the biggest moments in the match.
The first set was a back and forth affair which saw six lead changes throughout. Instrumental to CSI grabbing the win was Justin Edwardsen’s six kills on eight attempts. Philip Szumanski chipped in with six assists to go along with four digs. St Joe’s fell victim to several receiving errors at the latter stages of the set that ending up being too much to overcome.
The second set was quite an entertaining one as CSI raced out to a 7-2 lead. However, St Joe’s continued to work and turned their five point deficit into a two point advantage. Play between the two teams was extremely even from that point on. Tied at 19 apiece CSI got big momentum lifts from Dewayne Stewart and Patryk Stepien each who contributed three kills in the set. Szumanski was at it again facilitating well for the Dolphins dishing out five more assists in the highly-contested set.
With all the momentum on the Dolphin’s side the third and final set began with another quick burst but this time the Dolphins never relinquished the lead. St Joe’s pulled within a few points several times in the set, thanks to great play from Raul Urshela and Iqbal Husain. However, it wasn’t enough the dolphins led by Brian Sheydvasser’s three kills in the third set were able to clinch the match in style by the count 25-22. .
CSI was led by Edwardsen’s 12 kills, while Stepien chimed in with six of his own. Szumanski was the main distributor in the match with 15 assists to go along with a pair of service aces and four digs. While defensively, Edwardsen, Sheydvasser and Szumanski were sparkplugs combining for a total of 18 digs. On the other side of the net Raul Ushela led the Bearcats with seven kills. Iqbal Husain aided, with 11 assists and five digs.
The Dolphins will next be in action on March 29, 2014 against Webb Institute for a 1:00 PM match-up right here at the Sports and Recreation Center.
