NESCAC's a Disapointment, but NCAA's a BONUS

 We ended up leaving for Maine (Bowdoin was hosting the NESCAC Tournament) on Thursday night after practice so we could get part of the way over there to break up the long trip.  What a great idea, right?!  We practiced for a little over an hour, did the scout and grabbed dinner at the dining hall before boarding a bus bound for somewhere in NH.  A little past Woodstock, VT our bus pulled over and he informed us we were trailing liquid and smoke and couldn't go any further, and we'd have to wait for another driver to come switch out our bus!  So....long story short, we sit on the side of a small, windy road in central Vermont in the dark hoping no one comes along too fast and hits us while we wait (and HOPE) that there's an available bus AND another driver who can bring it to us!  Fortunately, it was RueAnn to the rescue!  She was driving Williams up the next day and was able to come bring us a new bus and once again we were on our way!

We slept in a bit the next morning and headed on up the rest of the way to Maine.  Once checked into the hotel for that night we walked around Brunswick, which is a cute town, and then headed over to Wild Oats Bakery for our pre-game meal.  What a place!  It was highly recommended and well worth it as we all enjoyed our sandwiches and even some treats from a super huge and expansive bakery of goodies.  That night we played Amherst again and started out very strong taking the first two sets and hoping for an early night of domination when....things started to unravel a bit.  

We knew Amherst was a tough team, and they had three players we needed to stop.  We were serving tough and playing well, but then their hitters started to heat up after a bit of a rough start for them.  We were close to winning in the 3rd set, but when that didn't happen, things started to fall apart a bit for us, and we lost the 4th set also.  We seemed to get a bit tentative and started serving a little more "safely" instead of aggressively, and by that time, I'm afraid we may have been a bit frazzled and ended up losing the 5th set to them 8-15.  We led in every statistical category except for Aces and Blocks, and weren't far off in those, but it just wasn't enough at the right times to get the victory, unfortunately.  [For context to new readers, we were the 5th seed last year and we upset Amherst in the quarterfinals in the 5th set by 2 points, as well as beating them earlier in the season by 2 pts in the 5th set.]  However, there's no other way to express our disappointment than:  Devastating!!  I knew we'd had a very good season, but didn't see how we could advance unless we at least won on Friday night, and might even need to win on Saturday since the NCAA had never ever taken a 4th team from the NESCAC (3 at-large teams).  We'd been ranked higher than Amherst all season and had beaten them head to head earlier in the season, which was important, but even when they lost the next day, I still didn't think we had a chance to go on...

Our Field Hockey team was playing in the NESCAC Championship at home that Sunday and several of us were there watching while we had the Volleyball Championship video on our phones seeing Bowdoin beat Wesleyan for the crown and still lamenting how our season abruptly ended so anti-climatically and sadly!!

Fortunately, our body of work during the season came to our rescue.  We had an incredible record of 20-4, with only losses to high Regionally or Nationally ranked teams (Tufts, MIT, Wesleyan, Bowdoin) and now Amherst, but the NCAA values the regular season more than Conference Tournaments apparently, so that was also in our favor!  My AD called me Monday morning before the selection show and said that he thought there might be a good chance that we could get a bid....so I had to delicately text the team to say--without trying to get their hopes up--that it might be a good idea to go ahead and get our weekly Covid tests "just in case" we ended up getting a bid to the NCAA's....and that started a stir among the team!  THEN...we got the bid and were headed to the BIG DANCE for the first time since 2016!!  NEW LIFE for our team!!

Senior Day and Halloween Notch Final Two NESCAC Wins at Home

What a finish!  We played two tough teams to finish our the NESCAC and regular season, playing both Williams and Hamilton at home.  We swept them both to finish strong and prepare ourselves for a run at another NESCAC Championship!  

This would be our home finale so we celebrated our seniors and Jack, all of whom we will dearly miss next year. I always double check the senior's majors so we can announce it pre-game when we recognize them formally on senior night, and they caught me off guard in practice by asking me to guess at their majors....I have to say, I was either right on or very close with most, although I definitely initially was WAY off with Ali's when I mistakenly said "Econ" to which she said, "COACH!?!"  And then I corrected myself saying I KNEW she was stem, and I wasn't sure how I guessed Econ, but I incorrectly said MBB when in fact she is Neuroscience!  I correctly knew both Maggie (Econ) and Corley (Psychology), and I also knew Jane was stem, but didn't get Chemistry right (and only then found out she was actually President of the Chemistry Club on campus!).  I have to admit, I didn't know Bella was a History major at all...not sure how I missed that, but figured she was in the Humanities.  It was a good check on how well I actually know my seniors lives outside of VB, so I'll try to be a little more diligent in future at knowing just what they're studying! (I knew Jack was a double Computer Science/Japanese Studies major because we actually celebrated him last year as well!)

Now, on to the games!  We knew Williams had a couple of new players that had been having great season's so far and they had big wins against both MIT and Tufts, so we knew they would be a good challenge.  We really served tough and kept them mostly out of system all night, which definitely helped us neutralize their offense.  We held them to a hitting % of .118 to our .234 but we didn't get the Aces advantage that we had most of the season.  We kept them out of system without actually acing them, which is a testament to their receive, I think.   Maggie had another double-double with 11 kills and 12 digs, while Corley (8), and Laney (7) also led our team in Kills.  Katie came through with 2 aces and Lucy dominated the net with a match-high 5 blocks!

 Williams Highlight Video

That night at Amherst, Hamilton beat Amherst in 5 sets, so we weren't really sure what to expect with Hamilton the next day!  We knew that had played everyone TOUGH and had lost several matches in 5 sets before the win vs Amherst, so we were prepared for a battle again on Saturday afternoon.  We played really well, and dominated the match sweeping Hamilton with set scores of 15, 12, 16 to close out our regular season 20-4!!

Hamilton Highlight Video

 We were excited to finish the season with 20 wins, especially playing the kind of volleyball we'd started playing lately, and felt confident going into NESCAC's with the 4th seed and ready to challenge for a championship!

Our Monday practice we also celebrated Halloween with our annual costume practice.  It never disappoints!  :) 

I love the creativity the groups display and it's always fun to see them.  We had the Wizzard of Oz from the Juniors, and Heavy Metal band KISS from the seniors.  Since I'm now 51 and grew up in rural Indiana at a time when big hair bands were popular as well as heavy metal bands, I'm very familiar with KISS, so that was a fun choice.

The next two classes chose animated films/shows to portray, which was also very clever!  The sophomores took me a minute to guess, but having had kids that watched a lot of TV helped and the color choices of the costumes sealed the deal--at least with Lexi!!  (You'll have to take a good look at the team picture above to guess, but Lexi didn't have her HAT on, which along with the color scheme is a big clue....

The frosh class chose to be the penquins from Madagascar, which they played off very well!  Very clever and creative....have you guessed the sophomores yet....

Sophomore class = Fineas and Ferb where Lexi was "Perry the Platypus!"  (Perry was my favorite storyline on the show, personally.)

Now, it's on to prepping for NESCAC's!!

Back on Track with Big Wins at NE Challenge and Plymouth State

October Break came at a good point.  We were just coming off our first three losses of the season in the past two weekends and were in the middle of mid-terms, so we all just needed a break.  We played Plymouth State on Tuesday of that break (NO classes Monday or Tuesday), so we left early so we could get out half way and stretch our legs. That stop came at the Quechee Gorge, sometimes referred to as Vermont's Little Grand Canyon.  We got out of the bus, stretched our legs, walked out to the overlook to see the gorge and then Addie led a short conversational exercise with small groups before we got back on the bus.  It was a nice break from the regular grind, and I think gave us collectively a good re-set on our mental outlook and perspective.

Then, we arrived at Plymouth State to face a 19-0 undefeated team and went on to beat them in straight sets, although fairly contested.  Corley led the team in both kills (11) and Blocks (3), while Kelly (3), Ali (2) and Gabbie (2) led the team in Aces and Britt (12) and Kelly (11) led in Digs. 

That next weekend we played in the New England Challenge, which is probably our toughest weekend of the season playing 3 of the top NEWMAC teams in MIT, Babson and Springfield.  We often fight with them for extra at-large bids to the NCAA's so it's a key weekend for us and for NESCAC usually. We opened on Friday night playing at Williams against Springfield and pretty much dominated by sweeping them with set scores of 22, 5, and 23.  The first and third sets were very competitive but we completely shut them down in every way in the 2nd set. We hit .311 for the match compared to their .126, but oddly enough other stats were not that far off, despite the one set where they only scored 5 points.  

Perhaps the most notable thing about Friday was NOT that we dominated a Regionally ranked team, but that we had a mishap with our hotel reservation and they cancelled our rooms at the last minute for not receiving our rooming list on time.  Thus, we had to make last minute accommodations and ended up at the Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort! It was only 15 minutes away, so we were lucky to have found them, but we had an...how can I spin this...an interesting night!  :)  We had 3 pods of rooms with various different bed arrangements like bunk beds, king beds and doubles and pull out couches, but we made it work and enjoyed our "resort" night!

 

After our team breakfast at the Country Store (which actually was great since they had bagel egg sandwiches as well as yogurt and fruit cup options in the store!), we headed back to Williams to take on both MIT and Babson, who were both NCAA teams last year.

Our first match of the day was against MIT, and although we battled them tough, we came up with the 1-3 loss.  The first three sets were very competitive as we both traded scores of 21-25 in each of those sets.  The last set MIT sort of ran away with it hitting .394 to our .029 and won 13-25.  

Here is the Video Highlights from MIT

 Against Babson later that afternoon, we rebounded and took a good Babson team to 5 sets, pulling out the victory after trading sets with them 15-13 in the 5th!  It was a great test of our resiliency as we lost the 4th set badly but came back strong to take a tight, hard fought victory in the 5th.  Corley was fighting some sort of weird illness that came on suddenly when she disappeared in the middle of one of the sets "to go throw up" so when she was due to go back in, we had to sub here out without her being there, which the refs were understanding about.  She returned, put ice on her neck and head, and ended up going back in and played fine, having 13 kills and 3 blocks.  Maggie had a big day with a match-high 20 kills vs Babson and a team high kills vs MIT with 13. Katie led the team in Aces with 3, while both Kelly and Ali had 2 as we continued our strong showing at the service line!

 Here are the Video Highlights from Babson

We felt good about the way we competed and played this weekend and we showed some grit and resiliency, especially against Babson to end the weekend.  We ended up having another Recovery Workout on Sunday and taking Monday off before facing off against our last two NESCAC teams on senior day to decide the ultimate seedings for the Conference Championships.