Fast Break: Volleyball extends win streak to six, the Mariners crush everyone’s dreams

Students of Willamette play a game of pickup soccer with the ducks. Art by Alyssa Diggdon.

Hello, Bearcat Fan! It’s that time of week again where I get to ramble about sports to my audience of five whole people — most of whom I’m fairly certain don’t know what a pass rush is. But oh well! The pen (my laptop) calls to me just as the ring called to Frodo or whatever. I don’t really remember the plot of “The Lord of the Rings.” This was a shockingly good weekend in Bearcat sports, with some notable exceptions. Let’s get the news over with, no?

Starting with the bad: football suffered a, you guessed it, heartbreaking loss against the Puget Sound Loggers in Tacoma on Saturday. The ’Cats struggled offensively, going scoreless in the first half, but surged back to tie the Loggers early in the fourth quarter, only to give up another two touchdowns and a field goal to lose the game 28-45. Football’s last best chance to earn a conference win for the first time in eight seasons is their Nov. 1 matchup against George Fox.

Men’s soccer put up a solid performance over the weekend, tying the No. 1 Whitman Blues on Saturday, with Rory Mckee (’26) scoring the lone goal for the Bearcats. On Sunday, they bagged a 5-4 win against the Whitworth Pirates, scoring all five goals in the first half.

Women’s soccer tied both Whitman and Whitworth 1-1, and goalkeeper Siera Edwards (’26) racked up an impressive 14 saves over the weekend, staving off the strong offensive efforts from the Blues and the Pirates. Both squads broke the school record for most ties in a conference season this weekend.

Cross-country continued their trend of mediocrity (sorry, cross-country) at the Linfield George Oja Invitational on Saturday, with the men placing No. 10 out of 32 teams and the women placing No. 14 out of 31. On the women’s side, all six runners that competed scored new personal bests (PRs), and four of the runners on the men’s side also PRed. 

Ending on a high note, volleyball extended their win streak to six, moving up to No. 4 in conference coming off of the weekend. On Friday, the ’Cats outlasted the No. 2 Pirates to win 3-2 at home, and on Saturday they swept the Blues, thanks in part to outside hitter Lexie Scott’s (’28) 16 kills. The ’Cats have five more regular season games, and if current standings remain, they’ll head up to Tacoma in mid-November for the conference championships.

In the wider world of sport: UMiami quarterback Carson Beck returned to his Georgia days, throwing four picks against unranked Louisville to earn the Canes’ first loss of the season. The Hoosiers moved to No. 2, Oregon jumped up to No. 6, and I don’t even need to tell you who No. 1 is, much to my eternal dismay. The MLB playoffs are giving every PNWer in the world a heart attack, including me, as I am temporarily disavowing my allegiance to the Chicago White Sox to root for the Mariners. Let’s hope this paragraph doesn’t age poorly when this article gets published tomorrow! The NBA regular season starts tomorrow, and the NFL remains as confounding as ever.

Edit: This paragraph aged poorly.

In the coming weeks: Can volleyball maintain their stellar form this weekend in Tacoma (and Parkland, Washington, if you want to be precise) and possibly dethrone the No. 1 Loggers? How will football look to bounce back against Pacific on Saturday? And can soccer take advantage of their solid weekend as they also head up to the suburbs of Seattle?