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...

Community Service Highlights

 Several individuals do various community service events on their own, but we try to do a few together as a team.  One of those was the Crop Walk to help raise money and awareness for food insecurities in our community.  This Spring in celebration of Earth Day, most of the College campus participated in Green Up Day, and our team chose a path between the the Athletic Complex and up through the main part of campus to clean up.  I don't think we had any pictures of us doing the Community Supper this year, nor of individuals with their "community friends" from town.  Some others help with mentoring of various different ages of local students and I'm sure I'm missing other activities as well...giving back is really important and is a win-win, especially in small, tight-knit community like Middlebury.

Small Group Dinners at Coach's House

I'm not a chef, and it's a bit hard for me to cook for the entire team and have it turn out ok, so I try to invite smaller groups out for dinner at my house over the course of our off-season.  This year, we had two groups and left out the seniors since I  take them out to dinner during Senior Week every year!

Our first group chose to make "design your own pizzas" with some various different items.  One was good old peperoni, and one had some veggies no cheese, and one re-created a local favorite of Apply, Bacon, Cheddar...and theirs was JUST as good as Flatbread!!

The other group had tacos.  Since we forgot to take pictures of our tacos (and they're less creative than make your own pizza), we took a picture with my chickens instead! Steph in particular was enthralled with our remaining 3 chickens, especially "Ginger" who she named and is holding here!  FUN TIMES!

Spring Lifting

We had a lot of fun together on the Fritz Strength Balcony this Spring.  It was a bonding time for us, as well as getting in a lot of great strength work.  We also shared space with other teams, which is always fun.  On Mondays we lifted with some of the Football team, Wednesdays we lifted with some of Men's Hockey, and Fridays we lifted with Women's Basketball.  We shared who got to choose the music each day, not just on our team, but between teams...no offense to anyone, but I think we enjoyed the basketball team music second to our own!  Here are just some of our pictures from the Spring lifting sessions.