Boxscore

PURCHASE, N.Y. – The Manhattanville women's volleyball team made head coach Amanda Alayon's first collegiate match a memorable one, as the Valiants overcame a tough first set to take the next three and retain Anderson Hill Road bragging rights with a 3-1 (22-25, 25-15, 28-26, 25-12) season-opening victory over neighboring Purchase College on Thursday evening inside Kennedy Gymnasium.

After nearly erasing a 12-point deficit in the first set, Manhattanville was impressive offensively for the remainder of the evening, as the team hit .231 over the final three sets to pull out the victory. For the match, Manhattanville hit .136 with 44 kills to Purchase's 28.

Senior Makana Gomes (Honolulu, Hawaii/'Iolani) led the way with a near triple-double of a match-high 12 kills (on .257 hitting) and 19 assists to go with eight digs, while classmate Ally Johnson (Branford, Conn./Branford) had a double-double with 10 kills and 12 digs and fellow senior Damaris Morales (Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic/Colegio San Jose) just missed with 17 digs and nine kills.

A pair of freshmen also starred in their collegiate debuts for the Valiants. Sam Delmer (Boise, Idaho/Eagle) donned the libero jersey and posted a match-high 26 digs to go with six kills (on .357 hitting), and Veronica Ferreiras (Rockville Centre, N.Y./Malverne) posted a double-double with 18 assists and 13 digs.

After winning the second set easily to knot the match at one, the entire match turned on a third set that needed more than 25 points to decide a winner. Manhattanville opened up the biggest lead of the set at 15-9, but Purchase stormed back to gain a 20-18 advantage and eventually had two set points up 24-22. After a Valiant timeout, a service error and an attack error reopened the door for the home team, with the second saved set point coming after the Valiants made several huge plays to keep the ball in play, including a diving dig by Gomes to just keep the point alive before the error.

Manhattanville staved off a third set point on a kill by Johnson, followed by a big service ace from Ferreiras to put the home team up 26-25. After an attack error by the Panthers gave the Valiants a second set point, Gomes put down a thunderous kill to give the Valiants a huge 2-1 set lead.

The squandered opportunities demoralized Purchase heading into the fourth set, as Manhattanville jumped out to an 11-2 lead and never looked back. In the deciding set, the home team had 11 kills and just two errors on 26 attempts (.346 hitting) to seal the victory, with Gomes (six kills) putting away as many as the entire Panthers squad combined.

Manhattanville (1-0) will look to successfully continue its season-opening four-match homestand on Saturday at the annual Valiant Tri-Match. The Valiants take on York (N.Y.) in the first match at 11 a.m., followed by York and Penn State-Abington at 1 p.m. and Manhattanville and PSU-Abington in the finale at 3 p.m. Both Valiant contests will be video streamed live on GoValiants.TV. Purchase (0-1) will host Bard in its Skyline Conference opener on Saturday at noon.