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!
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.
