Whit '10.5 Visits, and Other Fall Fun

We had a surprise visit from Whitney Bean on Friday before we left for Hamilton.  Her youngest brother Tom was here doing his official visit with the soccer team, and she and her parents came up to enjoy the weekend also!  What a great surprise it was to see Whitney just appear at my office door!  And, of course, she showed the girls her "rock" since they'd recently found out she was engaged!  Maybe we'll get the last of the Bean clan to come to MIDD and keep it all in the family!   I'm sure they all enjoyed seeing our Football team absolutely rout Amherst after all the years when Jared played football and Amherst was unbeatable.  GO MIDD!

And, FALL is upon us, and what a gorgeous one it is so far.  If the sun would ever stay out long enough to enjoy the beauty, it could be one of the best in years?!  I took this picture out behind the field house while the sun was actually out between all the rain we've been having.  As I'm writing this, I can hear the rain on the roof yet again.



Last week, I had another surprise, but it was in our chicken shed.  THE FIRST EGG!  I've been checking the nesting boxes for the past couple of weeks thinking, "any day now."  And, there it was, a little egg!  Here's Maxwell showing off the egg!

 A couple of weeks ago now, when we had our home stand against Williams on a Wednesday night, and then Colby and Bates over the weekend, I actually got out and played some golf with Dave Gibbs and Tim Barrett, and my husband.   I hadn't been out on our course here since last Spring when Jane and Elissa and I went out with the softball coach and one of her seniors during senior week.  It's a "lifetime" sport, and one which I encourage all my athletes to pick up.  Eventually, you'll want to know how to play, and it's almost always easier to learn when you're younger.  That's what I believe, so that's what I tell them.  In college, you can take a PE class and learn how to play for free! 

Anyway, what fun we had that day, however, even in the light drizzle!  We also got in a game of 3v3 on the basketball court, but I didn't get pictures of that--no one needs to see the three of us all sweaty!  All I will say is, our VB dad's still got GAME!  There was some talk of doing another sport to complete our "triathlon," but we didn't get quite that far.  We still have another home weekend, though, so who knows...

MIDD Downs Hamilton, Loses to #12 Cortland

Heading to Hamilton, we knew we had two tasks at hand.  We needed to secure one more Conference win by beating Hamilton, and we also wanted to test our squad against a Nationally ranked opponent.  To top it off, SUNY Cortland was the team that ended our season last year, and headed on to the Elite 8 after winning the NY Regional.  Despite a rainy ride over on Friday night, Saturday turned out to be quite nice, even though we were inside all day.

First things first, however, and that was Hamilton.  We felt good going in to the match, despite still playing without Julia.  Kathryn has stepped into running the 5-1 with ease, and our offense has responded really well.  We hit .347 as a team against Hamilton, and were led by Olivia with 11, Amy with 10, and Piper with 9 kills.  Piper had NO hitting errors, and Olivia only had 1.  It was a nice team win, and we had good contributions from Lauren, Meg and Lizzy, in addition to the other starters. 

After a wonderful lunch provided by Stud's mom and dad, we regrouped to play again at 2pm against Cortland.  Even though we knew that Cortland would be a good match, I feel like we maybe didn't believe that we could beat them from the start.  They are a big blocking team, and they have a very balanced attack, similar to us.  We seemed to come out a little tentative, and we didn't quite find our rhythm until the 3rd game, and by that time, it was a little bit too late.  We tried our hardest to extend the match and work our way back into it by taking a game, but we just couldn't quite seem to pull it out. 

We trailed most of the first two sets, but the 3rd set was very much back and forth most of the way.  We saw our hitting % drop to .075, and we were out blocked 14-9 for the match.  The last game was where the action was, at least for us.  The most anyone led the entire set was when they got out to an 0-3 lead.  We had a brief lead of 11-9, but mostly it was either tied, or we were up or down a point.  We got down 22-24, and made a comeback to tie it at 24, but would then we would both have our opportunities to win the set, but neither team could get ahead by the necessary two points until they finally got us at 35-33.

In that last game, however, both Piper and Maddie has started to figure out their middles, and both had their best hitting set with 4-1-8 stats for Piper, and 3-1-11 for Maddie.  I think we learned a lot about ourselves, and that will be good moving forward.  It was a great match overall, and was a very fun third set for sure!  We've had only one other set quite like that, and that was against MIT last year at the Hall of Fame Tournament. 

Since we have a contingent from mid-state NY, both Lizzy's parents and Stud's parents were taking good care of us with regard to food!  We had food in between games, and then for the ride home, we had platters of pasta, salads, fruit, snacks, oh, and those famous parfaits by Stud's mom!!  And, lemon bars, which I think Maddie had hoped for (or maybe even asked for?!)  So good!!  Of course, I took pictures of the food.  :)

We have a full schedule coming up, so I think it was a good weekend to really get tested, and see where we are, and what we have to focus on at this point in the season.  We're traveling to Skidmore on Tuesday, and then on to Amherst and Trinity over the weekend for two more Conference matches.  It's getting to the really exciting part of the season where everything starts to come together, and we're all looking forward to putting our game out there on the line, and seeing what we can do, improving one day at a time.

MIDD Downs Colby-Sawyer in 3

It was a dark, and stormy night...oh, wrong beginning.  That's just from my childhood days of reading Snoopy.  It was a dreary afternoon though.  It was rainy, cloudy, and foggy, but it somehow still managed to be gorgeous over the Middlebury Gap!  Breadloaf was exploding with color.  However, when we got over to New London, NH, we were buried in a fog bank.  Stud was driving her own car with Lizzy and Piper, who all had late class, so between that, and Nicki and Charlotte still being out, we counted up before we left and had everyone we were supposed to have at 10 people!  At least we got to spread out in the vans.

Once we got over there, our breathing exercise was a very tight group with only the 10 players, and it seemed odd to have such a small group.  Very shortly after that, however, our other three walked in, which was great.  We got started off in a typical way when we play  over there.  I'd warned the team that every year we go over there, we end up in a long, 5 game battle, so be prepared.  Nicki didn't travel with us because she's still getting over her illness, and Julia was out with an injury from practice the day before, but we felt good going in because of our team depth, as we've said all year will be a major strength.  The first game went to extra points, back and forth with each team having their chances up a set point.  We finally prevailed by a score of 30-28.  MJ was our hot hitter with 7 kills in that first set and only 1 error. 

The second set started out the same, trading points.  By the middle of the set, we started to pull away and built a lead of 15-10, and then 22-11 behind strong serving runs by both Amy and Caitlin.  They had a brief run of their own, but we closed out the set 25-17. 

The third set saw us get off to an early lead of 8-4, only to see the game tied at 16-16.  Maddie ate up her opposing middle getting 3 kills on 5 swings, and still MJ was still on fire getting 3 kills on 4 swings.  It wasn't a big blocking game for us, but both Piper and Amy came up with solo blocks at key times, which was great.  Kathryn was setting a 5-1 tonight in Julia's absence, and Meg was came in back row for Olivia and provided some very steady serve receive.  We outscored them 9-3 down the stretch to take the final set 25-19, and end the match in 3 straight sets.  We were very happy to get out of there in three straight.

The surprise of the night came when we actually had fans--well, two anyway!  Caitlin's mom and sister Molly showed up to cheer us on....AND bring us sandwiches so we could eat quickly and head home.  THANK YOU!!  It's been a busy week for work, and many people are still getting over colds etc. so getting on the road and heading home quickly was wanted by all of us. 

Today, the busy work schedule continued, and a couple people couldn't come at all to practice, and Julia still couldn't practice, and lots of people had a ton of work, so I just gave them the day off.  We'll all hopefully have time to catch up on work, sleep, and whatever else needs catching up on so we're ready to go this weekend.  Next week will be another busy week, so we're hoping to catch our breath right here, and then power through!  Tomorrow night we head over to Hamilton to spend the night before taking the court with them on Saturday morning.  Saturday afternoon we'll face off with SUNY Cortland in a rematch from the NCAA Regional Final from last year, so this will be a fun weekend with a tough Conference foe, and a tough out of Conference foe.  Cortland is currently ranked 12th in the most recent Division III National Rankings.

MIDD Sweeps NESCAC Weekend at Home

Our first of two home weekends went very well, which was fun!  We had some exciting things going on with both the team, and also with some external factors.  Middlebury College Alexander Twilight Artist in Residence was on hand both Friday night and again Saturday afternoon to grace us all with his singing of the National Anthem.  What a treat!!  He's had both Lizzy and Nicki in class, and really wanted to come out and support them (and us!).  Despite being sick this week, he came out both days, which was a real treat for all of us. 

Our match with Colby on Friday night was a very typical Conference Match.  We outplayed them in the first set by very strong play both defensively and offensively.  Despite having three service errors to only one ace, we came up with only ONE hitting error in the first set, and that led us to a 25-14 first set victory.

The next set proved to be quite a battle!  We got down early by scores of 1-6, 7-13, and 14-20.  It wasn't looking good for us, and they were playing well, and we were not coming up with the blocks or the digs to stop them, and we weren't having the offensive success that we'd had in the first set either.  We closed to scores of 18-22, and 20-23 before tying the game for the first time at 23 after a badly needed three point string.  We continued the string one more point to give us our first game point at 24-23, but they would tie it up three consecutive times as each time we had game point but couldn't convert.  Then two kills, one by MJ, and the next by Olivia put us up 2 games to 1 on a real nail-biter of a second game!

Colby had a lot of fight left in them, and didn't seem daunted at all by the fact that we just almost stole that last game from after they'd led almost the entire game by as much as 6 points for quite a bit.  The 3rd game was within two points for most of the time.  The largest margin was 4 when Colby led 15-11, and the rest of the game was back and forth the entire way.  It was a great battle with both teams coming up with big digs, and several long rallies.  We felt like our offense was more powerful, but it seemed that every time we got our offense running, and seemingly crush the ball, they would come up with big defensive plays and just keep the ball in play!  The score was tied at every point from 19-19 to 24-24 before Colby finally took two points in a row on a block, and then an unforced hitting error by us to win that set 26-24.

The last game was more like the first in that we got our offense really clicking again, aided by very solid defensive performances and good serve receiving.  In this game we once again had only one hitting error, and only one receiving error.  We closed out the win with a stuff block by Olivia and Maddie.  Everyone played at least one game as 3 different people went in to serve for Piper, and all were great contributors to the win.  Both Meg and Stud played very solid defense on the night in the back row, so it was very much a total team effort!  It was a match that saw us have two games with only one hitting error each, 10 service errors on the night, 16 total blocks, and a team hitting % of .239, and a reception rating of 2.38.  Those have been two of our goals (to be above .200 hitting, and above 2.0 on reception), and we surpassed both, which was great, despite the up and down nature of the match overall.

Saturday afternoon we played Bates College, and we had another fun surprise in that the PEP Band showed up to play.  They played a bit during the lineups, and during timeouts and between games, and it made for a fun atmosphere.  Once again, Francois graced us with his singing, and he even felt much better, which was very good to see!!  Also, both Nicki and Charlotte showed up back on our bench, which made our team complete again!  Nicki has been very sick of late, and Charlotte is hopefully on the mend after her illness, but will still be out of action for a while, but it was great to get her back on the bench!  Hopefully Nicki will be back in practice this week!!  Today, however, it was Bates that came out strong, and took the first game 25-23.  On paper, it may have looked like we were the better team, but then that's why you actually PLAY the games!  It was very close most of that first game.  We took a lead of 14-9 early on, but they held the leads later in the game going up 20-16, and 22-18.  We battled back to 23-24, but couldn't come up with the tie and they took the first set on a hitting error on our side.

The next set was more of the same, unfortunately.  We traded points almost literally the whole game until they took a slim lead 19-17 and carried that up to 24-21 lead before we battled back and took the next 5 points in a row to win 26-24.  We showed extreme poise during that run, and I think they may have gotten a little tight and were trying to finesse some shots while we just stayed aggressive and with our game plan, but it was a huge turn of events for us to win that game after being down 3 game points, any of which would have put us down 0-2 in the match.

We then really started to click, and put our full game together, and saw our offense come alive, and our defense wasn't allowing any of the off-speed, or back row attacks to drop!  Our ball control was very good and allowed our offense to get rolling.  We closed out the match by taking the next two games 25-16, and 25-14 to seal the weekend sweep of NESCAC foes!  Our hitting % soared to .319 against Bates with three hitters with double digit kills in Amy, MJ and Maddie with 17, 12, and 10 respectively.  Julia Gibbs once again had a superb night with 7 kills and only 1 error (.462), 33 assists, and 20 digs.  Along with Julia, Caitlin and Amy and Stud anchored our defense with 17, and 15 and 9 digs.  Kathryn came in to set the 6-2 again and tallied 24 assists and 12 digs.  Piper carried us defensively at the net with half of our team blocks to her credit.

MIDD downs Williams in 4!

It was a fun night for sure in Pepin.  Everyone likes to see a "Purple" school go down.  We came out ready to go, and looked great to start the game.  Our receive looked great, and our passing was on, and we just seemed to be putting things together.  They are a very good team, and it was very close the whole way, but we stayed on task and won the first set 25-22.  The second set was pretty much them, but we did help them out a little by having a few more unforced errors than we'd had in the first set, and despite it being pretty close in score, they were controlling the tempo in the 2nd set, which saw us serve out 6 times in that set alone.  The third set was very much a back and forth game, and we actually were down heading into the 20's in that game, and we just held our composure, and chipped away, and managed to pull out a very tight, come from behind 3rd game.  I think that proved to be crucial in the long run as we seemed more confident than they did mid-way through the 4th set.  It was a very tight match for sure, with both teams playing great defense, and being very scrappy all over the court, but we prevailed by taking the 4th set 25-20 for the win! 

By all accounts, it was a very fun match to watch.  Neither team lit it on fire offensively, with them hitting under .100, and us hitting just .132, but we did have a very balanced attack with MJ leading the way with 15 kills, followed by Amy with 8, Olivia with 7, Piper with 6, and Maddie and Julia with 4 kills respectively.  Julia and Caitlin defensively led the team with 21 digs apiece, while Piper and Julia both had 4 blocks, and Maddie had 3.  Julia also led the team in assists with 29, and service aces with 2 for a very balanced game overall.  Kathryn did a great job coming in to set from the back, and we had very solid contributions from both Stud and Meg playing back row as an OH.

It was what we like to call a very good TEAM win.  We were working well together, communicating well, and chasing down all errant balls, and getting a lot of them up and back over.  We are right back in action tonight as we face Colby College here at home, and Bates tomorrow at 2pm.  Both games will be webcast, in you're interested.  It's a big Conference Week for us, and one of only two home weekends this year, which are always so much fun!

Trip to Coast Guard Academy Finishes 2-1

We knew going into our weekend that US Coast Guard Academy would be a tough match.  We didn't know that much about the other two teams there, but we've had consistently tough, and very close matches with Coast Guard the past few years, and this year proved to be no different.  On the way down, we'd watched Armageddon, or most of it.  We pulled into the parking lot at a crucial time in the movie, so I let them watch just a little bit longer.  We had to get just to where the two groups reunite on the asteroid (after previously thinking the one was gone), so that hopefully we'd all be feeling good, and not tense with emotion heading into the gym!  We got to watch some of the first match between the two teams we'd play on Saturday, which was good, and then we started to warm up for our game.  We came out very strong in the first game, and once again had a back and forth, extremely tight game that we ended victoriously 25-22.  We had a very tight game in the second also, but unfortunately, we didn't emerge with a two set lead, but rather a 1-1 tie.  Here we go....

Well, it went downhill from there, and the Coast Guard took the next two sets as well, and neither set saw us reach 20 points.  It just wasn't our best show.  Our receive struggled at times, and our karma seemed off a bit, or something.  We just couldn't seem to get any momentum, and we seemed to make things hard for ourselves at every turn.  At any rate, we just didn't put it all together, and thus didn't really put up the fight we wanted.  Take nothing away from Coast Guard, who played a very smart game, and were a very consistent, aggressive, and worthy opponent. 

That night was one of the few times that we actually ate at the hotel.  It was nice because they gave us our own room (although it was right next to the Karoke Bar, and let me tell you, I could have been a singer in that crowd!)  We had a late dinner there, and then got to bed for an early rise the next morning.  They'd fortunately changed the schedule, however, and instead of playing at 9am, which would have meant a pre-7am breakfast, they'd moved our match to 10am, so we didn't have to rush out quite as early.  After a continental breakfast, again in our own private room (nice!), we headed back over to Coast Guard for another day of volleyball, and hopefully a better show of our talents!

We started off with DeSales University.  We'd learned at dinner the night before from Pete, our bus driver that they had traveled here on an "executive charter" or something like that, which meant that they had leather seats, a kitchenette, and small tables with seats facing each other in parts.  In other words, it was like business class on an airplane!  Pete had taken pictures on the inside of this bus and shared that with us.  Anyway, we decided to switch around our lineup again, as we've been doing back and forth so far this year, and it had a slight roller coaster effect.  We had a late surge in game one to pull ahead from a mid-game tie to a 25-16 finish.  However, we never really showed up in game two, trailing the entire time, and only coming away with 13 points.  The 3rd set proved to be a crucial one, with both teams trading points at times, and then both going on runs to pull away, or catch back up.  Fortunately, we put together the last run and pulled out the victory 26-24.  With a 2-1 lead now, we seemed to regain our confidence and pulled out the match win 25-17 in the 4th set.

We then had a very nice lunch just outside the facility overlooking the river.  Angela (and others probably helped as well?) brought us some yummy lunch items to eat between matches, which was great.  THANK YOU!!!  We had Katie's dog, and Caitlin's dogs all there, and we'd seen Nicki's dog on the previous weekend, so we're getting some good dog lovin' in this season so far.  You could actually smell the ocean, which was nice, and it was a gorgeous Fall day with warm sun, and very pleasant temperatures outside.  After enjoying being outside in the gorgeous sunshine, we headed back inside to watch a little, and then prepare to warm up again for our last match of the weekend.

Lasell proved to not be all that strong, and it was a perfect way for us to end the weekend.  Everyone got to play, and everyone played well!   Nicki went in game two to serve for Piper and almost served out the game with a string of probably 7 serves?  Katie played back row for Amy in that game, and did a fabulous job, coming away with an assist, two digs, and an attack attempt.  The last game saw mostly our future out there, except that Stud and Maddie were keeping an eye on the young ones.  Kathryn set a 5-1, and Lauren played libero, while Stud and Lizzy played OH, and Olivia played RH, and Nicki served and played back row for Piper.  With Charlotte out for a while now, both Maddie and Piper have to play all the time, until we pull out our secret weapon of a MH....

We're back at home ALL week, which will be great.  We host Williams on Wednesday night, followed by Colby and Bates on Friday and Saturday.  It will be a big Conference weekend for us with 3 matches in 4 days, so we're looking to put it all together this weekend, and keep having FUN!!

Pool Workout Day

We don't often have a week of practice with no mid-week matches, so it's nice to take advantage of that time to get some extra rest, and also a fun, non-impact workout to change things up a bit.  Today was that day.  The training room knows all, so when I went to tell our trainer that we weren't going to practice today, but we were going in the pool instead, she commented that some of the upperclassmen had been talking about it last week.  That made me laugh.  I guess I'm getting somewhat predictable?!  Well, to change things up at least a little, I asked them to come with sweatshirts to add some resistance to the workout.  (That was a new twist!)

We did a fun, shorter workout in the pool, sweatshirts and all, and then celebrated Piper's 20th birthday with a cake that someone made (I think?!)  We sang "Happy Birthday" in the hallway outside my office after our workout, with everyone basically still dripping wet. Happy Birthday, Piper!!  And last week, we celebrated Lauren's birthday with cookies from the team, and cake from her parents.  A lot of Fall birthdays on the team, it seems.

Oh, and a little tradition we have on pool workout days is to do the "Whirlpool!"  I video taped it this year, and I was told by Maddie that some of the recent alums would probably really get a kick out of seeing it from this perspective.  (Maddie was a little under the weather today, so she stayed out of the pool, and had never seen the "whirlpool" from the pool deck.)  :)