Semi-Final Finish for Men at Rick Pierce

We wrapped up our non-traditional season this past Sunday at one of the biggest adult volleyball tournaments in the area. The Rick Pierce Invitational is one of the premier tourneys in the Northeast with 15 adult teams competing by invite only in an AA/Open level field. Rivier was the only college team in the mix.
We finished Pool play with a solid 6-2 record - our losses came from a veteran Rhode Island team who for years has been one of the best in New England.
First round of playoffs pitted us against a confident team named "Blue Chips" - a group of players from the CT/NY area. We came out smoking and put down a 30-16 drubbing on the blue chippers.
In our semi-final match we faced the top team from Club Creole (based out of New York City) who was undefeated in set play up to this point. In an impressive display - the D3 school from NH put up a fight and ended up pulling out a first set 27-25 win over the open club team.
Needless to say the Creole boys weren't too happy with this and went on to step their game up to win the next 2 sets.
Creole then went on to sweep the Rhode Island team 2-0 in the finals. Our 4 set losses through the day came from the 1st and 2nd place teams in the tournament. Pretty solid showing for RIV and the best finish to date in our 4 appearances in the event.

Boston University Invitational or RIV Alumni Game???

BU - we need to talk......

We may need to talk to Boston University and have them rename their Winter Invitational Tourney. The annual 32 team showdown features the biggest and best of the east coast college club squads (BU, Northeastern, BC, URI, UConn, Syracuse, UNH, Delaware, Cornell to name a few) along with a handful of Division III schools and adult USA teams. After 2 days of play who was still standing in the end.....Rivier College and the USA Adult Club Team named The Lost Boys which featured 4 RIV alumni.

The Raiders went 5-1 in pool play with wins over Williams College, Bryant University, and the University of Delaware on day 1 then went on to defeat Johnson & Wales University (DIII) in a game to 30 to advance to the Gold Round of day 2. From there RIV downed University of Connecticut 2-0 and Newbury College (DIII) 2-0 to advance to the Championship Match.

The Finals was the best out of 3 and all 3 sets would be needed to decide the winner. Both set 1 and 2 finished with the scores of 25-23 as The Lost Boys, represented by Greg Stanton (RIV 06), Nhut Chau (RIV 06), Justin Andreozzi (RIV 07), and Scottie Wright (RIV 09), took the 1st set and RIV won the 2nd. The deciding set to 15 was tight until 10 points when RIV pulled ahead and won with a score of 15-12.

This was the 2nd time in 3 years the we have won the (Raider?) Winter Invitational.

Another Raider Joins the Coaching Ranks

It's always exciting to hear about a successful RIV Alum earning the opportunity to coach volleyball at any level. Its' even more exciting to hear it's a college position. Lindsay Marshall (2008) was newly named the women's volleyball head coach of division 3 Salve Regina University in Newport Rhode Island.
Go to www.salve.edu/athletics/news/news_detail.cfm?news_ID=883 to read Lindsay's press release.
Best of luck Lindz and hopefully see you and the Seahawks at The Muldoon!!!