Box Score Brockport, NY – The State University of New York at New Paltz women's volleyball season came to an end Friday as the Hawks fell in straight sets the College at Brockport 25-16, 25-20, 25-18.

"Coming in as the four seed you can't take anything for granted especially in this conference with so many of the pool plays being so close," said head coach Matt Giufre. "A lot of matches could have gone either way, but we have higher aspirations than fourth place in the regular season and we need to figure out how to get that done. We prepare to win every game we play so it's always going to sting on a loss, and we're disappointed in the result tonight."
 
Taylor Cimillo opened up the scoring in the opening set with a kill on the outside and helped the Hawks jump out to a 3-1 lead, but then a nine-point swing from the Golden Eagles brought the momentum back to their side and they never looked back. Brockport never looked back in the first set and ran away with a 25-16 victory.
 
Despite a disappointing start to the match, the Hawks started strong in set two and a six-point run with Maddie Zwickl at the serving line gave New Paltz a 13-7 lead in set two. The Golden Eagles fought right back and knotted the score up at 16-16 off a kill from Meaghan Mastro, but a Maddie Van Pelt smash on the outside gave the lead back to the Hawks at 17-16. The second set was back and forth the rest of the way until it was tied up at 20-20 where New Paltz was unable to capitalize on multiple side-out opportunities and allowed the Golden Eagles to run five straight points and take a two sets to none lead.
 
In a must-win third set for New Paltz, Brockport jumped out quick to a 4-0 lead, but a tip-kill from Kerri Neville a few points later brought the Hawks right back in it down 7-8. At 16-11 following a Giufre timeout the Hawks set up a play for Maddie Van Pelt to run a two-ball out of the middle and it worked to perfection bringing New Paltz back into it only down four points. Unfortunately the Hawks were unable to string enough points together to mount a comeback and fell in the final set 25-18.
 
The Hawks offense posted a strong performance, hitting .241 for the match, but they were unable to slow down the high-powered Golden Eagles allowing a .359 hitting percentage. Van Pelt led the way for New Paltz hitting .471 with eight kills and no errors on 17 attempts. Neville followed close behind hitting .455 with seven kills and two errors on 11 swings. Taylor Cimillo also added eight kills on the match , while Maddie Zwickl dished out 24 assists.
 
Senior libero Veronica Matedero notched 8 digs out of the back row. Matedero led a strong back line all season long for the Hawks consistently hindering the attack of opponents.

"It was easy to lead the back line all year when you have such willing and hard-working teammates," said Matedero. "We were all willing to pursue, do everything, and find corrections to make, and we all communicated and worked well together."
 
The Hawks finished the season with a solid 20-12 overall record.

"To be honest I didn't really know what to expect out of our team this year bringing in nine new players," said Giufre. "I thought Maddie and Veronica as well as Ruby really did a good job of establishing our standards and what level of play we were looking for. I think we have a lot of good, young players who need to learn from this experience so we can perform better next time around."