Yan's Career Night Leads Tartans to Victory at UT Dallas

(DALLAS, Texas) - The Carnegie Mellon University women's team moved to 3-2 after a 3-1 win at the University of Texas Dallas (UTD) on Friday, September 10 in its first match of the UTD Fall Festival. In the win, Texas native junior Stella Yan (Coppell, Texas / Coppell) dished out a career-best 47 assists in her homecoming while senior Vivian Beaudoin (Washington, N.J. / Warren Hills) registered a team-high in kills with 17. 

The Tartans took set one 29-27 behind seven kills from Beaudoin. Sophomore Olivia Devereux (Manhattan Beach, Calif. / Marymount) had four kills in the set and scored the final three offensive points for the Tartans with two kills and a service ace to win the set.

The home team picked up a two-point set two win with senior Carrie Stewart (Victor, N.Y. / Victor) leading the offense for the Tartans with four of her 10 match kills. Two of Stewart's kills came in the first three attack winners for the Tartans in set three which the Cardinal and Gray would go on to win 25-18. Sophomores Jane Dean (Wilmette, Ill. / New Trier) and Laura Reichard (Guaynabo, Puerto Rico / Saint John's School) each had four kills in the set.

The Tartans built a five-point lead at 7-2 early in the pivotal third set and never led by less than two with that margin coming with a 9-7 advantage. The Tartans pushed the lead back to five at 13-8 on a kill by Reichard, her first of four for the set, and then traded points the rest of the way before finishing with a Reichard kill for the 25-18 set win. The Tartans hit .424 in set three with 16 kills in 33 attempts.

Stewart opened the offense for the Tartans in the fourth set with a kill to make it 3-0 and finished the match with her season-best tenth kill, for the 25-13 final score.

Dean tied her career-best with 12 kills, hitting .611, as the Tartans registered their second-best hitting percentage of the season at .278 and top number of kills for the year at 60.

Reichard also tallied double-digit kills with 10 while she was second on the team in digs with 19. Freshman Abby Chen (Fairfax, Va. / Oakton) led with a career-best 21 digs and also had four service aces. Yan collected 17 digs to go with her career-high assists while Beaudoin and Dean each collected four blocks.

The Tartans continue action at the UTD Fall Festival on Saturday, September 11 against Aurora University at 10:30 a.m. CT before completing their play against Southwestern (Texas) at 3:30 p.m.