FAIRFAX, Va. – In its second season under head coach Jackie Simpson-Kirr and her staff, George Mason University's women's volleyball team made great strides in the competitive Atlantic 10 Conference and its busy non-conference schedule. All season long the Patriots fielded one of their youngest lineups in history with five of the team's freshmen earning at least one start during the recently completed campaign.

According to coach's orders, all 16 players gathered back in Fairfax in early August, with only several weeks' worth of time for preparation for another edition of the D.C. Volleyball Challenge. Unlike a year ago, however, there was something special in the air at the RAC Gym as the Patriots worked hard to ready themselves for the contests against their local rivals Howard, American, and Georgetown. The biggest news for the Patriots was on the defensive end, where assistant coach Taylor Unroe brought a brand-new system from her alma mater Florida. Precisely that new defensive system, in addition to the arrival of assistant coach Eric Arriaga from Stanford and of Simpson-Kirr's seven-player inaugural freshman class, gave Mason a sense of fresh start that brought along countless positive emotions. Both as a team or individually, the 2016 season featured numerous highlights that reminded Patriot fans of the program's glorious past and foreshadowed to the promising future that lies ahead.

Team Highlights:

• Between Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, Mason won three-straight matches for the first time since 2011, knocking down Duquesne, La Salle, and Fordham in consecutive five-setters. With the 3-2 win against Bucknell in the Penn Invitational on Sept. 10, the Patriots' five-set victories numbered four, the most since 2009, the year when Mason triumphed with the Colonial Athletic Association title.
• On Oct. 9, while Hurricane Matthew was wreaking havoc on the East Coast, Mason traveled down to Davidson for an A-10 contest. Simpson-Kirr's players wrote their names with golden letters in program history by accumulating program-best 123 digs against the Wildcats. The feat still stands as one of the top five team performances in Div. I and only the fact that both Penn and Albany (N.Y.) have had 124-dig displays this season places Mason outside the top five for total digs by a team in five-set matches.
• Mason showed face in defeat as well during 2016. In September the Patriots traveled to Dayton for an A-10 contest against the Flyers in the Frericks Center and managed to stay in the match by winning the third set 25-22, doing so for the first time in history. Even though Mason lost the match 3-1, Simpson-Kirr's team had two kills more – 49-47 – than its opponents, which went on to defend its A-10 title several weeks ago.
• Mason's new defensive system led to positive results in its very first season of application: the Patriots picked up 174 digs more than the season before and recorded 2.2 digs per set more than they did in 2015. At the same time, Mason decreased the attack efficiency of its opponents by 0.032 and their kills per set from 12.61 last season to 11.9 this season.
• The Patriots had to wait until Oct. 28 to get their first A-10 victory, but it came against no one other than fourth-placed Duquesne, who came to Fairfax with a 6-3 conference record. Mason had two one-set leads erased, but a career-high 23-kill performance by Tiffany Clarke helped the Patriots get past the Dukes for a prestigious win. The win gave the team a much-needed confidence boost and Mason went on to win two additional five-set matches – against La Salle and Fordham, respectively – in a row to materialize its first three-match win streak since Sept. 4, 2011 and the best in the program's A-10 history.

Individual Highlights:

• Sophomore libero Catie Espinoza was a force in Mason's defense all season long and finished all but five of her 27 matches in 2016 in double-digit digs for a total of 483 digs. Espinoza's best single-match performance composed of 46 digs at Davidson on Oct. 9 and still stands as the third-best performance in a Div. I. five-setter this season while also going down in history as the best digging performance ever by a Mason player.

• Freshman outside hitter Mikala Wells contributed six of Mason's 10 service aces against American on Aug. 27, which at the time was the most aces by a Div. I player in a five-set contest.
• Wells and classmate outside hitter Bailey Williams played a key role in the Patriots' attack in 2016 and had four double-doubles each.
• Freshman middle blocker Katrina Santos was a wall at the net and accumulated 52 blocks over the course of her first season as a Patriot, averaging 2.6 blocks.
• Over the course of the season, each of Mason's players recorded at least one season-high or career-high performance in one of the FIVE significant statistics – kills, digs, assists, blocks or service aces. As a team, the Patriots combined for 50 career-high performances and 57 season-high performances in 2016. It was the two setters who took the top two spots for constant improvement: senior Caitlyn Hipsher had 14 season-high performances (four each for assists and blocks and two each for kills, aces, and digs); junior Kelly Schaller had two career-high performances (both in for assists) and seven season-high performances (two each for aces and digs and one each for assists, kills, and blocks).

All-Tournament Team Selections:

Tiffany Clarke: Mason Invitational, Valley Forge Sports Penn Invitational
Sydney Fanoga: Mason Invitational
Catie Espinoza: D.C. Volleyball Challenge
Caitlyn Hipsher: Hampton Inn Invitational