The State University of New York at New Paltz women's volleyball team is coming off a tough loss to Stevens Institute of Technology, but is ready to get back to its winning ways with this weekend's Bomber Invitational at Ithaca College.
 
The Hawks currently stand at 5-4 and will be playing their third tournament of the season this weekend. They began the season with the Kean Tournament where they split all four matches. Following that was their own Hawk Invite where they won the opening three matches, but fell in their final match to Stockton University. This past Wednesday the team faced a strong opponent in Stevens and after a hot start, taking the opening set 25-18, SUNY New Paltz eventually fell to the Ducks in four sets.
 
Sophomore middle hitter, Kerri Neville, said, "From our loss against Stevens we learned that we have to keep playing tough when the competition is tough. Stevens is a great team and so are we, but we have to keep the energy up and keep playing hard even when it's rough."
 
Neville currently leads the team in hitting percentage at .252 and is trailed by fellow middle hitter, Demi Herasme, at .212. The Hawks have recently refocused their offense around playing through the middle more, much like in their match against Stockton where both Herasme and Neville had eight kills on 16 attempts.
 
SUNY New Paltz didn't pad their pre-conference schedule. The have played tough opponents every weekend, but Neville and the Hawks are looking forward to another challenge at the Bomber Invitational.
 
"This weekend is a hard weekend," said Neville. "We're playing very hard teams, but I hope for our whole team to improve. We're a young team so really hard competition is something we're looking forward to and it'll help us get better as a whole coming up to our SUNYAC play."
 
SUNY New Paltz is a young team, but have a solid foundation of senior leadership from Maddie Zwickl and Veronica Matedero. Zwickl is currently averaging 9.64 assists per set while Matedero leads the defense with 4.23 digs per set.
 
The Bomber Invitational is the final tune-up for the Hawks before they begin SUNYAC play the following weekend where they open up with SUNY Geneseo, Potsdam, and Plattsburgh.

For updates and highlights for all those matches follow @nphawks on Twitter.