FREDONIA, NY – On Saturday, the RIT volleyball team (10-15) took down Hilbert in four sets (25-14, 25-14, 23-25, 25-17) only to follow it up with a hard fought five set loss to host Fredonia (13-25, 25-23, 19-25, 25-23, 9-15) at the Blue Devil Invitational. Freshman #Sarah Szybist (Chicago, IL/Ramstein)# earned All-Tournament Team accolades.

The Tigers took care of business in their first match of the day against Hilbert racking up 32 kills and 17 service aces over the four sets. 

The five services aces by both #Bethany Davis (Blasdell, NY/Frontier) and Abby Higgins (Peru, NY/Peru)# accounted for 10 of the 17 they had in the game.  Szybist continued her torrid play, leading the team with 18 kills while setter #Arielle Pariente (Twinsburg, OH/Twinsburg)# earned 27 assists in the contest.

With two straight wins under their belts, the Tigers entered their final match of the tournament against host team Fredonia.

Despite dropping the first set 25-13 to the Blue Devils, RIT rose to the occasion, winning two of the next three sets to push the contest to a fifth and final set. In the end, it wasn't enough for the Tigers who lost in the fifth set 15-9 to end the tournament 2-2 overall. 

Szybist recorded a team high 19 kills in the match, just ahead of sophomore #Sara Martin (Rochester, NY/West Irondequoit)# who had 13 kills, tying her career high.  Sophomore #Taylor Harkness (Batavia, NY/Batavia)#, who joined the team a few days ago, had her best performance of the weekend racking up nine assists and nine digs.  Pariente finished a superb weekend with 26 assists. 

Szybist's 70 kills over the four games was a main reason she earned All-Tournament team honors as the sole nominee from RIT.

On Friday night, the Tigers started the Blue Devil Tournament with a loss to Westminster only to later end the night with a win over LaRoche.

RIT will be in action again on Tuesday, Oct. 8, as they will head to Brockport to take on the Golden Eagles in a non-conference contest that gets underway at 7 p.m.