Post Season Awards

We had many nice honors and awards this season, starting with the All-NESCAC awards.  We had NINE members on the Academic All-NESCAC Team also, which was great!

NESCAC:

Gabbie--2nd Team All-NESCAC

Britt --All-Sportsmanship Team

NESCAC All-Academic:  

Lucy, Manya, Laney, Britt, Lexi, 

Katie, Kelly, Caitlin and Steph. 

Katie and Kelly were both honored by NEWVA (New England Women's Volleyball Association) and the AVCA (American Volleyball Coaches Association) and Gabbie and Laney were honored by NEWVA.

AVCA:

  

  Kelly was 1st Team All Region

    Katie was Honorable Mention All-Region

    Kelly was Honorable Mention All-American

NEWVA:

    Kelly and Gabbie were 2nd Team All-Newva

    Katie was Honorable Mention

    Laney was selected for the Senior Classic, honoring the region's top seniors.

Kelly joins a very select group of MCVB alums selected for Honorable Mention All-American, so an extra congrats go out to her for that nice honor!

MCVB Wraps Up 2022 Season with Banquet at Fire & Ice

Always fun to celebrate our season!  I miss the team once the season is over and we don't get to hang out every day.  We have class photos here as well as our Team Award winners.  Our banquet is a time to celebrate our Team for this year, and our seniors.  We keep it pretty simple, because that's who we are, but we had our dinner this year at Fire & Ice Restaurant, which was different but nice! 

Our Seniors got their Middlebury Fleece Blankets with their number's embroidered on it, which I think they all enjoy! Then, we have pictures of each class in reverse order, and the freshmen are awarded the Varsity M for their first year on varsity!

For our Team Award Winners, we had ties for two awards this year.  Our Panther Pride Award for the best teammate went to both Kelly and Lexi (the Black Mug).  Our Yellow Jersey Award (think Tour de France) for consistent daily effort  went to both Campbell and Kelly (the Yellow Jersey.  And, our MCVB Spirit Award went to Britt and she got the pen set for her desk!  

It's always fun to read what their teammates write about them when they're voting and we read off a few of those replies for each person. when handing out the awards.  It was a fun night to celebrate everyone on the team, including my assistant coaches Brian and Jill, our Trainer extraordinaire Beth, and our Faculty Affiliate Melissa.  Thank you one and all for another fantastic season of Volleyball fun!!

MCVB Alums Visit Campus

We LOVE when our alums visit us either here on campus or when we're on the road, so I wanted to highlight a few recent visits!  We had a surprise visit from a couple of somewhat recent alums in Emily Kolodka '18 and Becca Raffel '18 over parents' weekend.   

 

I've already written about some of these others, but to put them all in one spot, Isabella Marcus '22, Shea Golden '21, and Ali Wheeler '22 saw us down at MIT.

And Corley Doyle and Maggie Wise (both '22) visited over Homecoming! 

SO fun seeing ALL of them--thanks for coming and continuing to support
MCVB!!

Additionally, here are a few other photos of Alums who've visited over the last couple of years:

KT Lillich '97 visited over reunion this past June with her son!  And, Jaime Wong Larson '06 visited later this past summer with her son and husband, who is also a MIDD Alum!

Heading into NESCAC's as 6th Seed

Our final weekend of play before the Conference Championships was at Wesleyan and Trinity.  We fought hard vs Wes, but ultimately, they were too strong with too many options for us to combat, and we lost 0-3.  The next day we traveled to Trinity, whom we needed to beat to secure the 6th seed in the tournament.  It turned out to be their Homecoming, so some of our team joined in the festivities by playing some cornhole before the game!  We took town a feisty Trinity Team by a score of 3-1, thus putting us in good shape for the upcoming NESCACs.

By finishing our season strongly, we earned the 6th seed in the NESCAC Tournament.  All things being equal, we were actually really excited about our match-up with Williams in the 3vs6 match.  We had barely lost to Williams early in the season losing 1-3 but having every set determined by only 2 points and extra points at that.  We'd grown a lot over the season, as I'm sure they did also, but we were eagerly anticipating our match with them.

Because Wesleyan had beaten Tufts head to head, they earned the right to host even though Bowdoin had upset Wes for their only Conference loss.  So, we headed back to Middletown, CT for the second weekend in a row, having played them the weekend before to end our regular season.

Williams started out strongly, taking the first set 14-25.  We bounced back and forced extra points in the second set and unfortunately came up on the short end of the 27-29 set two.  That would have been huge if we'd been able to pull out that second set as we did end up securing the 3rd set win 25-23.  Although we fought valiantly in the fourth set, we dug ourselves a bit too much of a hole and ended up losing that final set 20-25.  To give Williams credit, I think they were playing as well as I'd seen them and they went on to make the NCAA's despite losing to Tufts in the semi-finals of the Tournament.  They ended up advancing to the NCAA Regional finals, so our showing against them was actually a good testament to how far we'd come during the season and we have high hopes for next year!

We'll certainly miss our seniors, but we have a good core coming back and with the additions of a new class of freshmen, plus hopefully having a fully healed Caitlin and Steph back in the gym, we're feeling good about a bright future!

MCVB Takes 2nd at NE Challenge!

Next up for us was the New England Challenge against the top NEWMAC teams starting with Babson (then ranked 23rd in the nation), followed by MIT (then ranked #19 in the nation), and then Springfield.  We had a tough 5 setter with Babson last year, and we were pumped to compete with a nationally ranked team.  We arrived in Boston to play Babson on Friday night and came out strong and really handled Babson keeping them under 20 points in all three sets we won.  Our middles were the main story as Lucy was a blocking machine in that game totaling 10 blocks while Lexi led the team with 12 kills! 

A nice bonus about playing in Boston is that it's easier for some alums to see us!  Shea, Ali and Bella all came to see us on Saturday afternoon, which was awesome--always LOVE seeing former MCVBers!!  

Saturday morning we played MIT, who lived up to their national ranking.  They were very tough but we put up a good fight and ended up being the only NESCAC team that weekend to get a game from them!  After our sweep of Springfield in the afternoon, we ended up taking second place because of that one set win vs MIT, so that was exciting.  Both Lucy and Katie were named to the All-Tournament team for their efforts.  Gabbie also had a very strong weekend showing having 36 assists/15 digs vs Babson; 31 assists/2 aces/3 blocks and 15 digs vs MIT; 31 assists/2 blocks/10 digs vs Springfield.  Lillian really is stepping us big for us as well now in the starting lineup finishing the weekend with 8, 9 and 11 kills respectively in the matches.

MCVB Celebrates our Seniors With Two WINS!

 After an up and down start to the season getting us to early October with a 7-7 record, we started to come together as a team, solidifying a lineup that was starting to click after early injuries forced changes often. Our Bowdoin loss at home for our first home court loss since 2018, and we swept an inconsistent St. Lawrence team to get back on track.  Next up for us was our Parents' Weekend when we hosted Colby and Bates.

Covid wreaked havoc on many things, one of which was our initial recruiting classes staying intact.  Although Addie stayed on track academically, she chose not to continue playing, but was one of our biggest fans at home, and Kelly took time off so is now technically a junior, so we had an "original senior class photo" tonight.

Colby was a much improved team and came in with an 11-4 record and a big win over Bowdoin, so we were prepped to compete!  We were really starting to play well together and swept both Colby and Bates, as well as a perennially tough Plymouth State team to finish our home stand with all wins!  It's always fun for the underclassmen to decorate the locker room and put up signs for the seniors, so we wanted to share them with you here also.

MCVB Passes the Mid-Way Mark

This season has been a road-warrior season.  Our first month was spent on the road every weekend, but we did have a couple of mid-week matches at home, which is easier on our class schedules.

Our second NESCAC weekend took us to Hamilton to play our travel partner and then a tough Ithaca team.  We played really well Friday night at Hamilton and came away with a 3-0 win, which was great.  Lillian got her first start of the year as we played without Katie who wasn't feeling well enough to travel. A bonus of that match was that we were down 22-24 in the first set and we pushed ahead to finish that first set with a 26-24 win, showing some grit and composure that we need moving forward!  Thus, the post-win Dunkin picture the following day!

That next weekend we played a talented Tufts team followed by a talented Endicott team, both regional powers so we got a great test that weekend.  Unfortunately, we came up with two losses, but we are taking stock of the controllable factors that we need to improve and will resolve to keep working hard in practice to better our skills day by day!

The first weekend of our two-week HOME stand was Fall Family Weekend, which was great to be home for along with all of our other teams.  The Fall colors were just about peak, so it's a perfect time to have parents all visiting VT, so that was good timing!  The weekend saw us take on two Conference foes in Connecticut College and Bowdoin, as well as a non-Conference opponent in St. Lawrence.  

We came away from the weekend with a 2-1 record, and although we lost to Bowdoin, we continue to see some very good play from different people, which is great. Also, Lexi's best friend plays for Bowdoin, so that was a fun reunion for them. 

2022 Season Starts On the Road

 The 2022 season got off to a great start with a lot of good work during pre-season.  We started off with a team and family BBQ at my house, which is an old tradition that got lost during COVID.  In our excitement to get that back, I forgot to get a whole group photo, but did get a few...

Kelly is now sort of part of two classes, since she started out with the current seniors of Lucy, Manya and Laney, but is now re-classified as a junior with Katie, Lexi and Britt.

Due to NCAA best practices, we now have an extended pre-season with a mandated "NO Double sessions" until day 8 into practices, so we have a longer lead-in to the season, which is really, really nice, especially for the freshmen.  They have a chance to get settled in and get to bond with the Team before all of the Orientation activities start with the rest of the freshman class's arrival on campus.

Here, Lucy is pictured with my dog, Sunny!  A lot of the team miss their own pets while away at college, so Sunny gets some extra attention when they come over, which, of course, she LOVES!  :)

Also, Vermont is behind the times with girls volleyball, so we're just getting a team going in Middlebury.  The HS had a season last year with a JV team, and now they have record turn-out so with another year of JV, they hope to get varsity status next year!  We had extra time during our pre-season, so we went over to help them out during that time, which is a really fun community-building activity for both groups!

Our season started out on the road mid-week before classes even started, but it was our closest opponent of the year in St. Michael's College, just 45 minutes north of MIDD.  We then hit the road for a 3 match tournament at Clarkson where we played two NCAA teams from last year in Stevens and Clarkson, as well as another match against Nazareth.  We came away from our first week with a 3-1 record, only losing to Stevens in the 5th set!

We were so close to Canada up at Clarkson, and with a dual citizen Canadian/US on our team in Reya, we decided to go to Tim Hortons instead of our usual, post-win Dunkin treat the next morning.

The following weekend we opened NESCAC play away at Williams and Amherst.  Two tough opponents to open up Conference play, but despite some early injuries, we played tough and although we lost to Williams 1-3, every set other than the one we won, we lost in extra points.  Ava got her first start as a freshman and had a good weekend, which was fun to see.

The following day we played another tough Amherst team, and again were foiled by a score of 1-3.  We were doing a lot of good things, but making a few too many errors to pull out the close sets, but that gives us focus for what to work on in the coming week.

Graduation 2020...Finally!!

Graduation 2020...it FINALLY happened!!  There was an amazing turnout considering these grads have been in the "real world" already for two years now!  It was another gorgeous VT day...isn't it always gorgeous in VT...and all three of our '20 grads returned.  

Here are the majors:

Gigi--History, Cum Laude

Beth--Neuroscience, Cum Laude

Chellsa--Political Science, Cum Laude

SO fun to see them, and although Tracy couldn't make it, the other parents were all there, and I'm sorry to say we missed Dick in our "DAD photo!"  

This group of parents was a special group who bonded over their daughter's MCVB experience, so it was great to see them back together as well to finally officially celebrate their daughters' graduation!

These pictures really tell it all...congrats to you all, and it was so great to see you ALL!!  We miss you, but are so excited to keep in touch and hear about your new life adventures!

Graduation 2022

Graduation Day 2022 was gorgeous...I'm not sure it could have been any nicer.  It was sunny and warm, but not hot, with a nice, gentle breeze.  Brian and I always enjoy watching graduation, and this year was no exception.  We caught up with everyone buy Bella afterwards, but somehow missed getting family pictures of everyone, but what a day!  

Here are the majors:

Jane--Chemistry, Summa Cum Laude

Maggie--Economics, Magna Cum Laude

Isabella--History, Cum Laude

Ali--Neuroscience, Magna Cum Laude

Corley--Psychology, Summa Cum Laude

Everyone with honors of Summa, Magna and Cum Laude...way to represent, MCVB!!  Also, Jane received Departmental Honors in Chemistry as well as the American Chemical Society Award for Excellence in Chemistry and Biochemistry.  Congratulations to all!!  We will sure miss you ALL!

Senior Celebrations

Senior Spring is a super busy time, and a time of culminating work, final dinners, celebrations and parties. Melissa joined us for the Athletic Department Awards Ceremony, which was so nice!  

However, before that final week, a few of us attended Jane's Thesis, which she CRUSHED, by the way!  As you can maybe see from the picture, Jane's Thesis was titled:  Theoretical Unimolecular Thermal Decomposition of Vanillin!  So, you know, light topic!

Then, I took the seniors out for dinner at Two Brothers, where we ran into both Caitlin and Gabbie having a last dinner out before leaving town for the summer, which was fun. Oh, it's going to be so hard to say goodbye to this group.  The fun thing for me is that we'll actually be on the same "schedule" for reunions, so their 5th reunion will be 35th, etc...