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.

Tough Road Stretch

Our first setback of the season came in a thriller at Wesleyan where we lost in the 5th set to a very good Wesleyan Team.  The next day we bounced back by sweeping Conn College, who took a game from Amherst the night before.  We dominated Conn in the middle especially as our kills leaders were Maggie (12), Corley (11) and Lucy (5).  additionally, we aced them 9 times to their 3 aces where Jane, Lucy and Britt all had 2 aces each.  Conn College Video Link

At this point in the season we started to really take note of our physical state and tried to schedule some recovery workouts to help us stay healthy and fit.  Our new trainer, Hannah, led us through a pool workout followed by yoga with our resident yogi guru, Prem Prakash on Monday instead of practicing--we thank them both for keeping us healthy this season!

The following weekend, we dropped a pair of key NESCAC matches to Bowdoin and Tufts.  We lead most of the first set against Bowdoin only to see them pull away at the end and take the first set by 4 points.  We lost each set 21-25, and they were all competitive until the last set where we had to claw back to make it look respectable.  The following day we played at Tufts, who we knew would be a different and more challenging match than Bowdoin, whom we match up with very well.  Tufts runs a faster offense than anyone else in conference, and they just pose a different challenge all around, and we were motivated to rebound after our performance the night before.  We started strong and Tufts made a ton of hitting errors and we took the first set 25-20 despite the fact that we missed 6 serves in the first set alone!  They bounced back and won the next two sets, but then the 4th set was very competitive again, and we made a late surge and forced extra points, but in the end lost 24-26 in the 4th.  Although disappointing, at least we felt we played with more energy and focus than the night before, and I think we learned a lot, as you tend to do more often with losses than with wins, unfortunately!   

Bowdoin Highlight Video Link

Tufts Highlight Video Link

New Program Record Set by Starting 14-0

We opened Conference play at home against Colby and Bates with two wins!  We actually dominated both teams allowing a maximum of 19 points in any given set in the two match sweep.  We combined tough serving along with high hitting percentages for the wins.  Against Colby, we hit .293 with 6 aces (5 all from Jane!), and against Bates the next day we hit .340 with 10 aces. Gabbie ended the weekend with almost 10 assists/set, which is fantastic!  Maggie and Corley led us offensively along with Katie and Laney.  It's so great to play at home and we continued to get big crowds in Pepin for our matches, which is such a fun atmosphere.  We have the perfect scenario, I think, since we have a strong veteran Team and everyone is desperate to watch live sports again!

The following weekend we continued our Home stretch with another Conference match against a tough Amherst team followed by Brandeis, who plays in the perennial power conference UAA.  Our Amherst match-up was a repeat of last years Quarterfinal match where we emerged victorious in the 5th set, and this match was a prefect repeat of that--including the 5th set win by 2 points!  It was a very tight, back and forth match, just like last year.  We won the 1st, 3rd, and 5th sets, and all were tightly contested.  Here's a great sniped of match point!

 

 Brandeis didn't pose as much of a threat as Amherst as we held them to a dismal .010 hitting % and swept them 3-0 with scores of 25-14, 25-15, 25-13.

The last week in September saw us play Skidmore away, and then we hosted Trinity on Oct. 1, and a double header of Endicott and Clarkson on Saturday the 2nd.  Against Skidmore, we continued our efficient hitting percentage hitting .324 for the match.  Our top kill leaders remained the same with Maggie (11), Corley (9), and Jane (8) leading the way again.  Gabbie continued to lead our offense and Kelly (18 digs) anchored our defense, along with Jane and Lucy (3 blocks each) and Corley (2 blocks.)

Our final weekend of our THREE week home stand saw us play Trinity on Friday night, followed by both Endicott and Clarkson on Saturday, both of whom have been NCAA teams the last couple of years.  Trinity was an up and down match with us winning easily in the 1st and 3rd sets, but struggling to pull out a 28-26 win in the 2nd set!  Neither team hit particularly well with them hitting .009 and us only hitting .173.  We did come up with twice as many blocks and more than twice as many aces, which was great.  Lucy and Gabbie both had 5 blocks and Corley had 3 while Britt led us in aces (3) with Kelly right behind with 2.

Saturday was a tough day having to play two strong teams in the same day, unlike our previous multi-match days in the opening weekend featuring teams that were not as challenging.  We lost our first set to Endicott 21-25 before dominating the rest of the match by scores of 11, 16, and 15.  They had a lot of fire power, but our defense held them to a .113 hitting % while we countered by hitting .283.  A key for us was our serving--Katie led with 5, Kelly with 3 and Britt with 2 while we tallied 12 total aces for the match!  Corley led us in kills (13) and blocks (5), while Maggie had 12K, 2B and Laney had 7K, 3B.  Gabbie had match high assists with 32 and Kelly led all players with 14 digs.

Clicke here for the Endicott Highlight VIDEO

The second match of that day saw us again lose the first set to Clarkson 24-26, and then we really had to grind out the win in the next three sets.  We could never quite pull away and they just kept tipping us to death and they were very good at it.  The stats were odd...they tallied more kills, aces, assists and digs than we did, but we out-blocked them 10-3.  They were both very good teams, so to come away from the weekend with three wins, we felt very good about that.  The wins also set a program record 14 straight wins, which is fun!

Click here for the Clarkson Highlight VIDEO

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.

Inside Look at MIDD During Covid

 Well, it's been a weird year to say the least, but we survived and hopefully have come out the other side of this pandemic with a renewed sense of resiliency and determination to look out for our fellow humans.  As we gear up for a more normal Fall, I hope you enjoy some short video clips of various spaces on campus that we filmed this past year.  Enjoy!!

Leadership Meeting in Spring

Downstairs in McCullough--Crossroads Cafe

Upstairs at McCullough--The Grill

"Grill" Video Explanation w/Britt

Bi-Hall with Katie

Room Tour with Lucy

Axinn Multi-Cultural Center with Lexi

Atwater Dining Hall with Lucy and Laney

Congratulations Seniors!!

Wow, pandemic or not, four years seems to go by faster and faster!  It's hard to believe we're saying goodbye to this group already!  As restrictions eased across the State and on campus, I invited the seniors out to my house for one last meal.  I didn't cook, however, because I still wasn't sure about those rules, so we got take-out from the Arcadian--one of the favorite restaurants in town (other than Sabai Sabai!)  

 Both Jaime and El were living off campus and still not allowed on campus until graduation, and Shea and Emma were living on campus so the only place we could all get together was off campus somewhere and since we were all vaccinated, including my kids, my house seemed like the perfect place.  

 We ate, laughed and talked about fun times and what's next.  A variety of choices with Emma headed to graduate school,  El working in NY, Shea as Mass General in clinical research, and at the time, Jaime was still undecided, but word has it that she will be staying in NY with a job offer coming right before graduation!  Congrats to you all, and more updates to come!  

 Graduation this year was in person, but to keep the overall numbers lower and to accommodate everyone's guests, there were 5 or 6 different mini ceremonies across campus.  While this was a little unfortunate because it's nice to have everyone be in ONE spot and share one graduation experience, it was certainly better than not having it be in person!  Here are a couple of the pictures the seniors sent me, since I also wasn't allowed to go this year.  It was graduates and family/guests only.  Brian and I always go and always really enjoy it, but at least the graduates got to have some sort of celebration in person with their families and some of their classmates.

Here are pictures from both Shea and El.  Shea's parents and sister came, and El's parents came.  The cane in the pictures is a MIDD Tradition, so I'll give a little more history on that sometime in the near future.  I'm also still hoping to get pictures from the other two...

 We will miss you ALL!  Good luck with your next adventures, and we look forward to seeing you back on campus to cheer us on, only this time as Alums!  But, as we all know...MCVB is family for life!