Many around Eastern University have been looking forward to seeing this year's volleyball team play. After a little bit of nervousness at the beginning, the 2008 squad gave their fans a glimpse of what they can do with a three-set win over Manhattanville College. Eastern improves to 8-0 on the young season.

The early moments of the match saw the Eagles make some great plays and some uneven errors as Coach Birtwistle's four freshmen starters fought off the nerves of the home opener.The nervousness did not last too long.

Courtney Reinhold dropped in several big kills early, and the Eagles quickly gained momentum. She would finish with a match-high 13 kills and 15 points. Even with three hitting errors in the opening set, the Eagles still put together a .462 opening set hitting percentage as Reinhold and Kara Hildebrand led the way to a 25-12 first set win.

Maria Horning continued to distribute the ball away from the Valiant defense, and the Eagles improved their hitting percentage in each of the next two sets. Horning finished with 36 assists.  Mandy Platt had the highlight of the second game with a great slide on a tight set that landed just beyond the ten-foot line. Platt continued her steady play with a 10 point day.

Birtwistle said of his team's day, "We were not quite as fine as we could be on our detail, but I attribute a lot of that to things that we are working on trying to add to what we do. We focused in practice on trying to expand options and some of the errors came as a result of trying things we haven't really tried to do in games before. I told them to keep working through it, and I think we were able to keep enough pressure on them to give ourselves opportunities to run offense. This will help us down the road."

With the win, the Eagles improve to 2-0 in Freedom Conference play. The team travels to York this weekend and will host nationally ranked Stevens Tech next Wednesday.