St. John’s Volleyball is blacked out at USF

posted by Mike Gurnis

In a season where it seems like very few things can go right for the Red Storm Volleyball team, the Red Storm got even more bad news on Sunday, when its match against USF in Tampa, Fla. was postponed due to a power outage.  No make-up date has been announced at this time.

St. John’s was trailing South Florida 3-1 in the first set, when the lights went out at The Corral in Tampa on Sunday afternoon.  Kun Song had delivered a kill for the first point of the match before USF scored three consecutive points, when the outage occured.

The Red Storm were looking to bounce back from a 3-0 loss to Georgetown on Friday night when they arrived in Tampa.  Now, the Red Storm must wait until Saturday for their next game, which will be against Syracuse in Queens.  The match is a part of the “Dig for a Cure” event to raise funds and awareness for Breast Cancer research. 

The Red Storm are 8-11 on the season, and are looking for a win after two losses in a row to Notre Dame and Georgetown respectively.

Volleyball players garner awards

Posted by Andrew Silverman

After finishing in first place in the Big East to wrap up the regular season, the women’s volleyball team gained recognition when the annual awards were announced yesterday.

Wioleta Leszczynska, the Red Storm’s senior setter, was named the Big East Volleyball Player of the Year. Leszczynska led the conference and ranked ninth in the NCAA with 11.58 assists per set.

Lena Yee also took home some hardware, as she was named the Big East Libero of the Year for the third consecutive season. Yee, who set the Red Storm record for digs and surpassed the 2,000 mark earlier in the season, led the team and ranked third in the conference with 4.13 digs per set.

Leszczynska and Yee were also named to the All-Big East first team along with teammate Valeria Kovaleva, who led the team and was ninth in the Big East with 3.30 kills per set to go along with a team-high 17 double-doubles. Casie Brooks, who was second on the team in kills and double-doubles behind Kovaleva, was named to the All-Big East second team.

Weekend Update

Posted by Anthony Morreale

The volleyball team went into an inhospitable atmosphere and came out with a Big East regular season crown on Friday night.

Read it here.

The women’s basketball team re-opened Carnesecca Arena in style with a convincing 70-52 win over Northeastern.

Read it there.

Yee records 2,000th dig

Posted by Andrew Silverman

In the volleyball team’s win this afternoon against the Seton Hall Pirates, senior Lena Yee, who already held the school record for career digs, recorded number 2,000 of her four-year career.

Yee, who recorded 28 digs on Friday night, only needed ten more coming into today’s match.  She had 12 digs on the day and with at least four games remaining in her career, will continue to raise the bar for whoever her successor may be.

Under the Radar

Posted by Andrew Silverman

Last year, they were 33-4 (13-1 Big East).  Last year, they won their first ever Big East Championship.  Last year, they had some of the top players in the conference.

And after last season concluded, they lost three of their top contributing players – the Big East Player of the Year, a member of the first-team All-Big East and a Big East Tournament All-Star.

This year, after losing six of their first 11 matches, the season’s future looked bleak for a young, talented women’s volleyball team.

Then something changed.

No one can say for sure what it was, but there is something different about this team.  They are clicking on all cylinders right now and head coach Joanne Persico-Smith’s team has only lost once since Sept. 19.

That brings us to this past weekend.  A Red Storm team that nobody expected much from at the beginning of this season started this weekend in second place in the Big East.  And they just went into West Virginia and Pittsburgh and swept both teams in their respective homes.

They now come back home in first place and prepare for four games in Carnesecca, all against middle-of-the-pack opponents. They are now 7-1 in the Big East and can easily win three of the next four (and possibly all four) at home if they continue the high standard of play that Persico-Smith has drilled into her players.

This team apparently never got the memo that this year should have been different.

And while we all watch the men’s soccer team dominate, and the women’s soccer team continue to excel on what seems like a daily basis, this team as flown under the radar.  But it wont be for long.