On Friday, #14 Stanford women’s volleyball held their Cardinal & White Scrimmage at Maples Pavilion. Attendance was free and there was a good group of fans out to cheer on Stanford in their opening event of the 2022 season.
Stanford was divided into two teams: Cardinal and White. Cardinal consisted of freshman Anna Pringle, redshirt junior Caitie Baird, freshman Line Andersson, sophomore Taylor Beaven, redshirt junior McKenna Vicini, senior Selina Xu, senior Natalie Berty, junior Malia Tufuga, sophomore Sami Francis, and freshman Kelly Belardi.
White consisted of junior Elena Oglivie, sophomore Kami Miner, senior Kendall Kipp, graduate student Emily Teehan, freshman Christina Armoni, freshman Elia Rubin, and junior Annabelle Smith.
Pringle was wearing white but played most if not all of her time with Team Cardinal. Junior Alex Lougeay and sophomore Maiya Tillman were both held out.
The match/scrimmage was four sets long. The first three sets were played to 25 points while the final set was played to 15 points. White won all four sets: 25-18; 25-19; 25-16; and 15-12. In that order.
When looking at how the rosters were divided up, it’s clear that head coach Kevin Hambly wanted to separate his three best players on two different teams: Miner and Kipp on White and Baird on Cardinal. Having them on the same team would have stacked things too much and yet even when trying to even things up as much as possible, the team that had two of those three (White) still won with relative ease.
Upon watching the scrimmage, it’s clear that the combination of Miner and Kipp alone is going to be a force to be reckoned with. Miner did a really good job of getting assists and creating easy kill opportunities for her teammates while Kipp did a great job of executing and converting her kill opportunities. Miner has really worked on the technical aspect of her position this offseason and it showed in the scrimmage.
On the other side, Selina Xu did a nice job of making plays and seemed to be really vocal while Sami Francis excelled as well in her outside hitter role. Francis seemed to have at least a couple of kills that were really pretty. And then of course, despite her team not winning, Caitie Baird performed well and looks eager to build on the strong season she had last year in which she led the entire team in kills.
All in all, the scrimmage seemed to be a success for Stanford. Nobody who played got hurt, everyone seemed to have fun and enjoy the chance to compete against each other, and then once again, the combination of Miner and Kipp seems to be a really exciting combination. When you add Baird and Francis to the mix, who were on the other side of the net, it’s clear that this Stanford team has a lot of firepower.
Up next for Stanford is a road trip to Nashville, Tennessee where they’ll face Lipscomb on Friday at 4:00 PM PT. That will be the first of a three-game road trip to start the season.
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