MAHWAH, N.J. – The Thiel College men's volleyball team split a pair of matches today as they opened the day with a 3-1 win over Continental Volleyball Conference (CVC) opponent Ramapo College before dropping a non-conference match against Arcadia University in five sets.
 
The Tomcats took the first two sets by marks of 25-21 and 25-19 to jump out to an early 2-0 set advantage over the Roadrunners.
 
In the third with a chance for Thiel to close out the match the Tomcats battled but fell just short. Each team was unable to close the set out as the two were tied at 25-25 and played on. The Roadrunners finally took the set 31-29 on back to back Tomcat errors.
 
Thiel bounced back to take the fourth set 25-18 and would collected their first CVC victory of the season.
 
Mitchell Patterson (Canonsburg, Pa./Canon-McMillan) had a season-high 21 kills and Jacob DeRue (Fairport, N.Y./Fairport) added another 15 kills. Stephen Borgen (Pittsburgh, Pa./Shaler Area) dished out 43 assists and Ryan Sumarsono (Victor, N.Y./Victor) collected 18 digs, both were game-highs.
 
The Tomcats second match of the day was a five-set non-conference loss to Arcadia University. Despite picking up the first two sets (25-16 and 25-23) the Tomcats would go on to drop the next three sets to lose the match.
 
Thiel collected eight aces and a season-high 57 assists as well as having three players in double-digit kill totals (DeRue, Patterson, and Dan Zajac (Ambridge, Pa./Ambridge)) but it proved not be enough to finish off the Knights.
 
Borgen collected a career-high in assists (48) and Sumarsono set a new career-high in digs (25).     
 
With the split, Thiel goes to 5-8 overall and 1-5 in the CVC.
 
Thiel will be back in action on Tuesday as they play host to non-conference opponent Penn State Behrend at Beeghly Gymnasium, match begins at 7:00 p.m.