Pre Season Activities

 

We're so lucky that pre season gives us the opportunity to not only practice together but also to get to know each other before everyone gets busy with their classes, friend groups and work! It's especially nice integrating the new freshmen to the team in a more relaxed environment.  Everyone moves into their respective rooms across campus, but only the Fall athletes are here for the first two weeks and we do a lot of team activities during this time in addition to practices.

We helped out at the MUHS practices a couple of days before their home opener, which is always a lot of fun, and they were STATE CHAMPS last year!!

We did speed dating on one of our first days as a good get-to-know-you better activity.  This year we also shared a fun fact about yourself that you think NO ONE on the team knows, so that's tougher for the upperclassmen and that was a lot of fun! 

The team went out to nearby Lake Dunmore for a beach day; although the weather wasn't all that great, it was still a fun afternoon off!  Then, we had a pool "workout" but it was more of a diving expose, I think?! We also learned that a couple of our Californians know how to "water polo tread!"

Pre-Season Begins

 

We start every pre season with a Family BBQ at my house.  It's a fun tradition that was started over 20 years ago now!  Many of the parents come and it's a great opportunity for them to get acquainted with each other as well as the first official bonding night of the new Team!  Here we are: MCVB 2026!

SENIORS and CAPTAINS:   Molly, Sophie and Gabby

JUNIORS (below on the left):  Sophie, Caroline, Campbell, Devin and Annabella.

 and SOPHOMORES (below on the right):  Ella, Nora, Molly and Kinaree.

FREHSMEN:  Natalie, Eliza, Jordan, Mischa, and Chloe

THEN we have our PARENTS!!  Thank you all for bringing your daughter to MIDD and for joining us at our TEAM FAMILY BBQ!  

AND, a special THANK YOU to the juniors, who brought me these beautiful flowers!!  And....we're OFF!!  2026 MCVB BEGINS!!

Graduation in the Rain

 I can't remember the last time it actually full on rained during graduation.  There have been years where it sprinkled, or rained before or after, but a downpour during...I don't think it's ever happened in my years...until this year.  Sorry guys!! 

As such, I missed seeing each of our seniors right afterward, but I did catch Ava and Kevin but had to get Lil and Cam to send me graduation pictures--Lilian...still waiting! :)  

Nevertheless, it may be the end of their MIDD years as a student for these three, BUT the beginning of their years as alums!!  Once a Panther, always a Panther!!  MCVB is family for LIFE.

Both Ava and Lilian were Econ Majors, and both were Magna Cum Laude!!  Campbell was a Film and Media Culture Major with a Music minor.

CONGRATULATIONS SENIORS!!  We'll miss you and hope to keep tabs on your bright futures and fun adventures to come!!

Senior Awards Ceremony

Every year each Department holds their own specific Awards Ceremony.  For MIDD ATHLETICS, this is quite an impressive day to hear and recount the many achievements of so many of our athletes.  CONGRATULATIONS to our three special seniors on fantastic careers as both students and athletes!  

WELL DONE, Campbell, Ava and Lillian!!  We'll miss you!!

Panther Profile: Campbell Keller '26

Our very own, very accomplished and versatile Campbell Keller was the feature of the recent Panther Profile.  She talks about her involvement with the HS Volleyball Team and the Middlebury College Musical Theater Club where she's appeared and starred in different productions including Grease, Urinetown, and Mean Girls.  Here's a link to the full video:   Panther Profile - Campbell Keller - Middlebury College  

We're so proud of you, Campbell.  You are the epitome of Division III student-athlete excellence with community outreach and service, scholarship, varsity athletic leadership and on-campus musical theater and other musical contributions on campus.  Talented and balanced...thanks for committing to the full MIDD experience, AND helping us win our 6th Program NESCAC CHAMPIONSHIP.  WE'LL MISS YOU!!  

Molly and Ava are CSC Academic All-District!

CSC Academic All-District:  Both Molly and Ava were tabbed for the CSC Academic All-District Team, which is a very nice honor.  Getting it done on the court AND in the classroom!  CONGRATS!

MCVB Banquet 2025

We recently celebrated our Season with our annual banquet.  We had brunch at Fire & Ice Restaurant before finals week set in!

We celebrated all of the accolades that players had accumulated over the season (highlighted in previous post) as well as the Team 
Awards that we vote on after the season.  

Our team Awards this year were the following:

Panther Pride (Best Teammate)--Lillian

Yellow Jersey (Consistent Effort)--Kinaree

MCVB Spirit (Positive Attitude/Spirit)--Lillian and Molly

Additionally, all freshmen are awarded their Varsity M:

Then, we took class photos:  Seniors, Juniors, and then sophomores: 

Thank you all for a wonderful season and lots of fun memories.  Looking forward to Spring practices and getting updates from the Juniors who will all be abroad!!  Happy Holidays!

Post Season Honors

 It was another successful season here with MCVB, and we have a lot of honors to showcase, both from the NESCAC and the AVCA.  

Molly Harrison was honored with the following awards:

NESCAC 1st Team

AVCA All-Region 1st Team

AVCA All-American (Honorable Mention)

NESCAC All-Academic

Lillian Caldwell had the following awards:

NESCAC All-Sportsmanship

NESCAC All-Academic

The rest of these players were also named to the NESCAC All-Academic Team:

Campbell Bartley                    Devin McCormack

Lauren Baxter                         Gabby Pribisich

Caroline Byrne                        Annabella Rando

Sophie Horn                            Ava Tuccio

Campbell Keller

CONGRATULATIONS to ALL!!  I especially love to see most of our eligible team members receiving All-Academic Honors.  Great work both on the court and in the classroom.  

Season Ends in NESCAC Quarterfinals

MCVB 2025 ended up with a 6-4 Conference record, tied for 5th with Bowdoin.  Since they won the head-to-head, we ended with the 6th seed.  All things being equal, we liked our seed as we were matched up with Williams, who we'd beaten earlier in the year in a 5-set battle.  It also happens to be the shortest trip in Conference, so that was also a bonus.

We traveled down on the Saturday late morning for our 3pm match time.  It was another battle, but we couldn't quite extend it to a fifth set this time, unfortunately.  After losing the first two sets 22-25 behind sub-par hitting %'s, we finally got some offense going to take the 3rd set 25-20 and it was our only set to hit over .200 for the match.

We battled but couldn't seem to string together the points when we needed them.  We had a decent lead in the 4th, but they strung together points when they needed to pull ahead and take the final set 22-25 again.  We've been on the other end of that with other teams and it's an intangible asset to score those important points at the times when you need them to close out a set or a match.  Hats off to them as they outplayed us this time around, but I was proud of our team for battling. 

We'll have Spring practices to continue our work, and we hope our juniors all enjoy their time abroad this Spring!  Thanks for a great season of fun memories, good times, and competitive volleyball.  Despite our 13-12 record, we played probably the toughest schedule we've maybe ever played.  Of our 12 losses, 11 of them qualified for the NCAA tournament, so that's pretty impressive and speaks to the level of competition in our schedule, both in and out of Conference.

Molly Surpasses 1000 Kills

Molly Harrison became the 7th player in MCVB History to surpass 1000 Kills.  She did this on Oct. 31, 2025 within the first few minutes of the Amherst match on senior night.  She only needed 4 kills to go over 1000, and got her 4th kill less than 10 minutes into the match on Halloween night!

She's in very good company on that list, following behind our only MIDD Hall of Fame honoree (Leslie Edwards '00), and a NESCAC ROY (Megan Jarchow '13), a NESCAC ROY/POY (Jane Handel '11), and three  AVCA All-Region honorees (Lexie Fisher '07, Becca Raffel '17, and Isabel Sessions '18).  These are some of the storied names in MCVB offensive history for sure, and Molly has a full season yet to play, which is exciting! 

It's a great honor and we're hoping she adds a lot of kills to the final tally before her time is done here at MIDD!  Congratulations on the nice milestone, Molly!

Senior Day/Weekend Wins

What a capstone weekend for our seniors!  After a very tough schedule, and mostly on the road, we finished off our regular season with two matches at home against Amherst and Hamilton.  Senior Day was designated as Friday night, and all three seniors stepped up! 

 Ava hit .500 with 5 kills, 1 error on 8 swings with 3 blocks to go along with that stat line.  Lillian had a season best 11 kills with only 3 errors on 24 swings for a .333 hitting %.  Campbell had a service ace to go along with 5 digs and 1 kill in the 3 set match.

These three have all been Academic All-NESCAC each year and their respective teams have been honored by the AVCA as Team Academic Award winners every year.  

Congratulations to you three--we'll certainly miss you and hope we get more time to compete with you over the next couple of weeks!!

Alumni Weekend

 

Alumni Weekend 2025 was another success!  It was a smaller turnout this year, but still oh so much fun!!  We LOVE having our former players return to campus and it's always great to see them back on the court for the Alumni Game.  Let me say it, they still got it going on!!  

We faced two tough opponents in Bowdoin and Colby and unfortunately didn't come away with a win this weekend, but we fought hard and had fun catching up with these amazing alums!

Corley, Claire, Lucy, Shea, Britt, Kelly and Jane--thank you so much for coming back and for all of your support of our Program.  MCVB really is a family for LIFE!!  Thanks for everything and good luck with your many adventures!

Birthday Boys

I guess we have fewer player birthdays during the season now, but two of our Coaches had Fall Birthdays so far!!  Assistant Coach Brian's birthday is Sept. 29th, and Our Student Assistant, Spencer had a birthday on Oct. 7th.

They both bring so much to our team, and we all like to share in the celebration of someone's special day...whether it's the singing or the cupcake eating, here's hoping they both had special birthdays!!

Early Season Road Warriors

Our travel schedule this year has been a bit brutal.  We LOVE to play, though, so road or home, we're always ready!!  We had back-to-back non- conference road weekends at Clarkson in NY and then at Scranton in PA.  Fortunately, we had some parents willing to make the trek both places, so we did have some great MIDD fans!  

The Clarkson weekend saw us go 2-1, sweeping both Clarkson and St. Lawrence and dropping a competitive 4 set match with St. John Fisher.

The first picture is Team Dinner at our Scranton Tournament, and the next one is in front of the building that was in the intro of The Office, or Dunder Mifflin.  The team was all pretty pumped about getting to see this!

We played three really tough teams in Salisbury, Cortland and Scranton this weekend.  It was all great experience, but unfortunately, we came away with three losses.  We were competitive and took a set in each match, but couldn't quite come up with the W.  Lots to work on and lots we're doing well, so it should be a fun ride!!

Pre-Season Fun

We are lucky to have time to "acclimatize" during our pre-season now.  It used to be that we jumped in with double sessions and were playing our first match less than a week after we started.  Thanks to some rule changes for health and safety of all athletes, we now have to take things slower, thereby allowing for more time overall before we start competing.  SO, to fill some of that time, we are able to do more team bonding and workshops etc.  

A very popular experience during pre-season is always going to a swimming hole or to the State Park beach.  I just happened to catch up with most of the team at the after-swim creamie!  My personal go-to is a vanilla/choc twist with rainbow sprinkles!  

The pre-season weather was great this year--nice, warm but not hot or humid for the most part, and sunny.  For an indoor sport, it's nice for us to get out and enjoy some of that great weather.

We also did some "speed dating" as a get-to-know-you-better" exercise.  It's fun and especially for the underclassmen, it's a great way to have personal conversations with each of your teammates.  We also met with an alum who works in Counseling at the College as well as meeting with two extraordinary women who work in the Wellness Education office here on campus.  

It's great to have the time to work through our skills without having to try to cram it all into double sessions to get it all in.  It's also better for our bodies, minds and souls.  Being able to do more of this other education and team bonding is also a great way to build on our already strong culture of MCVB.  Our unofficial motto is:  "It's ALL about the TEAM" and what better way to cement that than by really making efforts to get to know each and every one of your teammates and also learning about yourself and general wellness resources available on campus.

 

During pre-season campus is pretty scarce with only the Fall athletes and some resident life staff living on campus.  It's great to focus on practices and getting to know teammates better, so we love it.  This year a couple of the senior captains are living in a house where they hosted a pre-season bonfire night and roasted marshmallows--old fashioned camp fun and a great team bonding event!  Ready to start our season with a Scrimmage at Williams on Aug. 30, our first match on Sept. 3 at Castleton, and then our first weekend tournament up at Clarkson/St. Lawrence on Sept 5-6--ALL before classes even get started on Sept. 8th.  LETS GO MCVB!!

2025 Season Begins With Preseason Family BBQ

 

We start our season as we have for the past couple of decades--with a Team and Family BBQ at my house.  The weather cooperated with us and we had a pretty nice night for our dinner.  My dog Sunny loved all of the attention.  

It's a great opportunity for the new families to start to get to know each other as well as getting the returners' parents together with all of us for a fun family evening!  We also have a new trainer this year, so Phoebe got acquainted with us all over the evening as well.

As we do, we also took pictures of each class to start the new year.  First up are the SENIORS, and the CAPTAINS--Campbell, Ava and Lillian!!

The next pictures are in reverse order, which Juniors (Molly, Gabby, Lauren (w/Sunny), and Sophie--aka Horn.

Then the Sophomores:  Devin, Sophie--aka Fish, Caroline (w/Sunny), Campbell--aka Bart and Annabella--aka AB.

Finally, the new ROOKIES:  Ella, Kinaree (w/sunny), Molly--aka Mac, and Nora.  We have a lot of double names so we need the nicknames so we know who is who....or at least so I know who is who! 

WELCOME MCVB 2025!!!

ALL-AMERICANS--Gabbie & Molly

 

We want to recognize and celebrate our TWO All-Americans this season with Gabbie and Molly, who were quite the dynamic duo!!  Middlebury Volleyball has been in existence since 1994.  We have had quite a few Honorable Mention All-Americans and All-Region honorees, and we had our first All-American in 2021 with Maggie Wise (coincidentally that was Gabbie's first year!), but to have TWO in one year is extraordinary.  

We're so proud of both of these players as they are total TEAM players and helped elevate the level of play all around and guided us to one of our best seasons ever!  This year's team tied for advancing the farthest in the post season getting to the Sweet 16 for only the 2nd time (only other time was 2011). Gabbie leaves the Program with several school records, and is the only player to be named either, let alone BOTH AVCA Rookie of the Year, AND AVCA Player of the Year.  Wonderful bookends to a fabulous career!! Congratulations to both Gabbie and Molly on a momentous year!! 

HUGE NESCAC/AVCA HONORS--Players of the Year

 We had some really great individual honors this year when the post-season awards came around.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, right?  SO PROUD TO BE A PANTHER!!

 Gabbie O'Toole was honored by the AVCA as the Region I Player of the Year!!  Molly was voted the NESCAC Player of the Year!  Annabella was voted the NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year! 

These are really great honors, and we're very proud of our whole team, but also really proud of these individuals for garnering these wonderful individual honors.  We talk a lot about the TEAM, and individuals rarely get honors like these without a successful TEAM behind them, so we can ALL celebrate these honors with them.  Well done, TEAM!!