MCVB Off To A Great Start!

We're off to a great start being undefeated through our first 6 matches, and it's sure been exciting, especially after a year without any competitions.  Our seniors are a huge reason for our early success, and they've been instrumental in leading this team through the pandemic and out the other side.  We've done a lot of work over the course of last year through the summer.  We've developed a new set of Core Values, have re-committed ourselves to working together to help each other be the best versions of ourselves, both on and off the court, have been educating ourselves through workshops and small group meetings on issues of inclusion and current events, and are also finding lots of ways to strengthen our bonds with each other.

We started our season off with a Home match win vs St. Mikes on the 2nd day of Freshman Orientation, so only the first year's were on campus.  It was a pretty quick match that saw us win in straight sets, and we had a great crowd despite the fact that most of the campus hadn't arrived yet!  So fun!  Then we took to the road and got another four wins down at the Wheaton Invite where we played Worcester State, Farmingdale State, Rhode Island College, and the host school Wheaton.  It was a long weekend of volleyball, but rewarding as lots of people saw some court time and we got to actually compete again and travel together as a team.

We also celebrated a birthday over the course of that first weekend--Kelly turned 21!!  As a re-classified sophomore, she's now old for her class!  (Ha ha!)  My daughter goes to school at Wheaton,so I knew of a nice bakery down there that would make gluten free/vegan cupcakes, so everyone on the team could enjoy the birthday treats!  

Our last mid-week match before heading into our first Conference match was at Colby-Sawyer.  They didn't pose much of a threat as we easily defeated them in straight sets as we're still fine tuning our lineup and transitions and responsibilities etc.  It's starting to come together, and as we get into Conference play, we'll be challenged and find out just where our areas that we need to improve on really are.

Pre-Season Fun

We had an extended pre season this year thanks in part to some new health guidelines (not related to Covid.)  These new guidelines stipulate when you can start to have double sessions and when you can add strength training and even testing into practices.  Normally we start double sessions almost right away because we have so much to fit in before our first match, so being "forced" to slow down that process, but actually having the time to do it was very nice for all of us! 

It also added some extra time for some team fun!  One of the things we did was take a morning and go to the Killington Mountain Resort to do a Ropes Course.  Here are many of our pictures from that day!  The team also has gone to the gorge to swim on the super hot days a couple of times, as well as just hang out on campus and get to know each other!  We have another pretty large roster with 18 players, and after a year off when the whole team wasn't together as a group all year, and now almost having two classes of freshmen who haven't competed with us yet the extra bonding and practice time has been great.