Three Attack Prongs, One Destination

Set three, Stanford led 24-23. One more point and the red-shirted side would force a fourth set and keep hope alive. Arizona State refused to give them that point. The desert team flipped the set, closed it at 26-24, and completed a straight-sets sweep over a program ranked eighth in the nation. The full scoreline: 25-19, 25-21, 26-24. What mattered was not the scoreline, but how they won. American collegiate women's volleyball, in NCAA Division I, is one of the most demanding arenas in school sports. The season runs from August to December, split into two phases: non-conference and conference. The San Luis Obispo Classic sits in the non-conference stretch, where teams build a resume for the end-of-season selection committee. For American universities, a win over a nationally ranked opponent counts as a ticket. Without those tickets, a season can end early. Stanford has a long tradition in women's volleyball. Arizona State does not. That is why this match is worth noticing. Stanford brought a hitter named Jordyn Harvey. She finished with 18 kills, a match high, at a .455 hitting efficiency. It was an outstanding individual night. Her team was swept. Arizona State's secret lived in three names: Aniya Clinton, Noemie Glover, and Una Vajagic. Clinton, a graduate outside hitter, hit .522. Glover, the opposite, leads the team in season kills with 126. Vajagic, who transferred in from Wisconsin this summer, has 124. Three players, three directions, and none of them carried the team alone. The top two Arizona State hitters still accounted for nearly half the recorded points. The distribution was far from perfectly flat. But against an opposing block, three threats are harder to solve than one. When a single hitter carries the offense, the block only has to stand in the right spot. Point by point, that block closed in around Harvey. In Set 1, Arizona State recorded 15 attack points; Stanford had 10. The gap came from the setter's ability to rotate the attack. That setter is Elle Mottola, a freshman. She finished with a career-high 45 assists, the second time this season she has passed 40. At 18, Mottola ran a three-pronged offense like a veteran. She distributed to all three directions, never letting the Stanford block guess the next ball. In Set 3, while trailing 24-23, Arizona State recorded 22 kills inside that single set. Add 12 blocks across the match, and the desert team showed an old but effective formula: distributed attack, concentrated defense. People still like to tell sports stories through stars. One brilliant individual is easier to write than a steady collective. But this match showed the flip side: Harvey played the best individual game on the floor, and her team lost three straight sets. Watching the match on tape afterward, I noticed something small. After every winning point, all three Arizona State hitters met at the middle of the court to slap hands. None of them was the night's lone hero. That, perhaps, is what Stanford was missing. A note on a unique mechanism of American collegiate sports: the transfer system. Vajagic left Wisconsin for Arizona State in a single summer. In many parts of the world, such a move is almost inconceivable. That mechanism lets a rising program patch a hole in months rather than years. Many people still treat women's sports as a side dish. I remember a day when the stands were packed for the men's game, while the women had to wait until late night for a broadcast slot. But this match reminded me that, given equal chances, women play volleyball as well as anyone. A trend is emerging: women's volleyball is slowly stepping out of the shadow of lone stars. Collective strength is returning, and it comes from young women like Mottola, who would rather share the ball with three teammates than anoint a single hero. What I treasure most in women's volleyball, in the end, is not the wins. It is how they rise after every time prejudice knocks them down. Some say I write too personally. But I believe the personal is what makes a voice. Three attack prongs can be stronger than one. Sometimes, the lesson on the court is a lesson for life.