Pre-Season Activities

 

Pre-Season starts with moving in and a Team/Family BBQ at my house every year.  It's a great beginning to our season and gets the parents and new players acquainted with each other and the team family atmosphere.  It's always nice when the weather cooperates, and this year was great.  The team just barely fits in our dining room, but I think they all got around the extended table!

The parent group is also a great one and despite the distance some of the team comes from, we had a good parent turn-out, which was really nice.  Here's a picture of the parent group also.  The gorgeous flowers were a very sweet gift to start the season, and I even took the smaller bouquet to my office to liven it up for pre season!

Also during pre-season, we did line dancing with the women's soccer team and the field hockey team--SO FUN!!  Due to acclimatization, we ease into practice and don't have double sessions until almost 5 or more days in, but they get to spend time arranging their rooms, hanging out and getting to know the new people, while also doing some team trainings together.

Additionally, during our pre-season we have the extra time to go and help out at the local high school with their volleyball team.  MUHS is now in their second full season as a varsity team, and we have a really nice relationship with them, so it's something that both teams really enjoy!!  It's great to be back and getting started together!!  

We also got to attend a home game that saw them win in a 5-set thriller!  LET'S GO MIDD/MUHS!!!

Juniors Study Abroad: First Up is Caitlin in Argentina

 

All three of our juniors are studying abroad this Spring, and our first highlight will be from Caitlin, who's studying in Argentina.  She's doing a home stay and had two different families hosting her during her stay.  Pictured here is the first family to host her, along with Caitlin's family and some other MIDD friends, followed by her second host family.

Next, we have the picture of the outside of her university in Buenos Aires.  It sounds like Caitlin is having a fantastic time exploring, learning from her host families, having family visit, and having adventures with her Program friends.  What a great experience--thanks for sharing with us, Caitlin!

The final pictures are a group of Caitlin's friends in the middle of the widest avenue in the world to the right, and a view of La Boca, a famous neighborhood in the city below!!

We miss you, Caitlin, but are SO happy for you to be having this amazing experience abroad!  Enjoy and thanks for the update!

Feb Graduation for Kelly Ferrero--'23.5

We're always sad to see our seniors go, and Kelly Ferrero has been one of our longest tenured players, ever. Several years ago, Whitney Bean ('10.5) ended up applying for and getting a medical waiver so she ended up getting her four full seasons while being here part of 5 seasons, but Kelly was here for her COVID Fall season, when we just practiced, plus four full, regular seasons. Finally, I guess, she had to graduate and leave. We'll miss her, but it's fun to take part in a very unique MIDD tradition of "Feb Graduation" where the graduates have their ceremonial procession at the College owned ski mountain!

All four of Kelly's former (or original) classmates returned for Graduation: Lucy,  Addie, and Laney in the picture to the left, and Lucy, (Lexi '24), Manya and Addie below.

Here are some pictures from the outdoor celebration and ski procession!  So fun!

Team Celebrates Season with Banquet

Fire and Ice was our location of choice this year for our Team Banquet.  It's always a fun time to come together again and celebrate our season.  There are certificates to hand out from the many post-season awards, but also the Team votes on a handful of awards, and then we celebrate our Seniors!  Our Team Awards winners this year were the following:

Panther Pride "Best Teammate"--Kelly Ferrero

Culinary Logistics--Katie Kraczkowsky (I came up with this one because Katie was such a huge help with the food orders on our road trips!)

MCVB Spirit "Positive and motivational spirit of MCVB"--Stephanie Mayer

Yellow Jersey "Consistent Effort, day in and day out"--Molly Harrison

Then, we celebrated our Seniors with the fleece blanket embroidered with their # and MCVB, and the freshman get their "old school" Varsity Letters!  

And, we can't leave out our sophomore and junior classes!!  The juniors will all be going abroad Spring Semester, and only Caitlin will be on campus for J-term, so the next time we'll all be together will be pre-season 2024!!  Thanks for a great season, Team!

Post Season Honors Abound

 It was a great season overall, and I'm very proud of this team!  We ended with a 16-9 overall record; 7-3 Conference record, good for #3 seed in the NESCAC Tournament.  We also finished ranked 2nd in New England, earning one of THREE at-large bids for NESCAC teams.  In typical fashion after a season like this, we had many people getting honors in the post-season awards.

Once again, this year, like last year, every upperclassman on the team was honored as an Academic All-NESCAC team member.  Freshmen aren't eligible, but to have every other member of the team achieve this level of academic prowess is something we're very proud of!

On top of that, both Molly and Gabbie O'Toole were named 1st Team All-NESCAC, and Katie was 2nd Team.  Then, we had four players make both All-Region and Honorable Mention All-American!!  It was truly a well-rounded team with two of those honorees being seniors, one junior and one freshman! Congratulations to all!

Additionally, Britt was honored by her teammates with her second consecutive All-Sportsmanship nod, so I just had to post her announcement with the picture of her loyal fan club below it!  We had some great fans this year, but Britt may have had the best show of support with these shirts--loved it!!

Season Ends in NCAA Regional Semi-finals

 

After a first round game that saw most people get into the game, we faced a very tough second round opponent in the host school, Johns Hopkins.  Against Manhattanville, Lauren led the way with 8 kills, followed by a trio of players with 6 (Kaite, Ava, Molly), and then Lexi and Steph had 5 and 3 kills respectively.  We led in every statistical category and had a somewhat dominant performance.  It was a great match, and a good start to our weekend!  (It was also my 500th win, which as coaches, we know just means I've been around a long time, but nice to get that milestone with this group in that setting!)  Another bonus of the weekend location was that Jack was close enough from home to come and help us out!  Always great to have Coach Jack back on the bench!!

The Hopkins match was a very tight match, and I felt like we played them very tough, pushing it out to four sets, but we couldn't quite force the 5th set.  We lost a tough first set in extra points 24-26, and won the second set, but couldn't come up with the points to push the score to even in the third and fourth sets.  Overall, we felt good about our performance.  They had one OH that we just couldn't contain who went off for 26 kills, but other than that one player, I think we more than held our own.  Ava led the way with 13 kills, followed by Katie with 11 and Molly with 10.  Lexi had a match high 5 blocks, followed closely by Molly with 4 and Ava with 3.  Kelly also had a match high 28 dig performance, landing her a spot on the NCAA Regional All-Tournament Team!

It's always hard to say goodbye to seniors, and this class really came together and propelled the team to a great season despite some injuries and tough losses.  We will certainly miss them all, but we also have a good core of returning players and a new group of freshmen coming in that we're excited about to continue our growth!

Post Season NCAA Run Takes Us to Baltimore

Despite not advancing to the NESCAC Championship game, we earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament!  We ended the season ranked 2nd in New England, and earned the 3rd seed for our Regional at John's Hopkins University, playing Manhattanville in the first game. 

 Because of the extremely long drive, we practiced early in the morning before classes on Tuesday, and then departed after the last class that day for NJ.  We stopped along the way to pick up Thai takeout--our preferred dinner on the road, and then went on to NJ to spend our first night.  

Then we went on to Baltimore where we checked into our second hotel (and where we would call home for the next few nights!)  We practiced at the facility that day and then went out to dinner at Cava, which was new to me but even better than Chipotle!  Our hotel was nice, and we had some down time to finish work, and because it was the final week before Thanksgiving Break, we had a few players who needed to take exams while at the hotel, so I proctored a couple of those and people finished up work and we prepared for our NCAA run!