Season Ends with Banquet at Swift House Inn

 We celebrated our season at the Swift House, which was a wonderful venue for our gathering.  A big thank-you to our supportive parent group who helped fund this event, allowing us to eat great food in a beautiful setting and enjoy each others company!  As you can see, it was also a gorgeous day outside.

After our delicious brunch, we celebrated our Academic All-Nescac award winners, so congrats again to Ali, Beth, Maggie, El, Corley and Jane!




We also celebrated our "rookies" with old school varsity letters!  I've mentioned this in the past, but Chellsa made a letter jacket with hers, and one former alum made a Christmas stocking with her letter on it!  Here are our freshman with their Middlebury M's:Kelly, Manya, Laney, Addie, and Lucy.

We also recognized our seniors.  The team celebrates and honors our seniors on Senior Weekend during the season and had already given them these really cool pillows with pictures from their four years, which has become a fabulous tradition.  Still a fun tradition, but not quite as sleek as that, the coaching staff always gives the seniors a fleece blanket with their number on it and one of their old practice jerseys!  This year, the captains were all three seniors, so we also made them a Mug with pictures of each of them on it, which was fun, especially given our collective love our Dunkin Donuts coffee!  (I have come to realize that not everyone actually likes the coffee, but we all still enjoy the pre-game tradition!)  You can always use another vessel in which to put coffee!

 We also had three awards that the team voted on.  First was the Yellow Jersey Award, given to the person who gave the most consistent effort in practice on a daily basis throughout the season.  This award went to Kelly Ferrero!  Next we had the MCVB Spirit Award, which goes to the person who most consistently demonstrated the positive spirit of Middlebury Volleyball, thus encouraging others and bringing positivity in practice and games, regardless of how things were going.  This went to Beth Neal (for the 3rd year in a row, I might add!)  Our final award was for Panther Pride.  This award is given to the person who is the best teammate; someone who makes those around her better by holding themselves and their teammates accountable to a high standard of excellence, while also being supportive and understanding.  They must also live our mantra of "It's All About the Team!"  This award went to Jaime Donnelly!  These three were very deserving of these awards, and it's a nice tribute to them to be voted for these awards by their teammates.

We also had a special celebration on this day because it was Corley's Birthday!!  My daughter Lois  helped me make a cake, and she decorated it because that's just not in my skill set, so a special HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Corley as well!

Swift House does a fabulous job with our Brunch.  It's a picturesque country Inn with wonderful food!!  Again, I want to thank our parent group for helping us keep this tradition alive, and we had a full group there with all of our coaches buy one, and also our Faculty Affiliate with her daughter!  We were just missing Jesse, who helped us out as a volunteer coach this year, as well as our Trainer, Bethany, who couldn't make it either.  It was another really fun year, and we're already excited about next year.  The newbies have now gotten in ED, but we can't make that public yet to follow the rules, but although we're sad to say good bye to our seniors, we're happy to welcome new players for next year.  The cycle of teams keeps going!


Happy New Year, and may 2020 bring you all health and happiness!!