Cambridge, Mass: The Ramapo College men's volleyball team, seeded #3, knocked out the #14 seeded Blazers of Elms College today in the opening round of the 2009 NECVA Championship Tournament. With the 3-1 win, the Roadrunners improve to 24-6 overall and advance to the quarter-final round tomorrow at 1:00pm where they will face the winner of #6 Vassar and #11, host, MIT.  Elms wraps up the year at 18-13.

The Roadrunners cruised past the Blazers in the opening game earning a 30-18 victory, before dropping a tough game two, 28-30 to tie up the best-out-of-five match-up. Game three went as game one with a 30-18 win in Ramapo's favor, and the Roadrunners took the match with a 30-25 win in game four.

Senior Shane Donohue (Freehold, NJ) hit .571 with 18 kills on 28 attempts and only two hitting errors while fellow senior Tom Kohler (East Brunswick, NJ) and TC Elsasser (Barnegat, NJ) put away 14 and eight kills respectively. Kohler hit .348 while Elsasser hit .357 in the win. Elsasser and Donohue combined for 12 blocks and rookie Colin McNeill (Little Falls, NJ) added three to the team's defensive game.

Leading the way on defense was senior libero Dan Sempkowski (East Brunswick, NJ) with nine digs. Donohue added eight and senior Jairo Sierra (Fair Lawn, NJ) chipped in four. Sierra dished out a team high 41 assists.

Ramapo hit a combined .380 with 57 total kills on 100 attempts with 19 errors. Elms went 48-111 with 34 errors hitting .126. Sequiel Sanchez-Velez (Puerto Rico) led the Blazers with 18 kills and Harry Sebastian (Puerto Rico) dished out 30 assists.