Season Ends with Banquet at Swift House Inn

 We celebrated our season at the Swift House, which was a wonderful venue for our gathering.  A big thank-you to our supportive parent group who helped fund this event, allowing us to eat great food in a beautiful setting and enjoy each others company!  As you can see, it was also a gorgeous day outside.

After our delicious brunch, we celebrated our Academic All-Nescac award winners, so congrats again to Ali, Beth, Maggie, El, Corley and Jane!




We also celebrated our "rookies" with old school varsity letters!  I've mentioned this in the past, but Chellsa made a letter jacket with hers, and one former alum made a Christmas stocking with her letter on it!  Here are our freshman with their Middlebury M's:Kelly, Manya, Laney, Addie, and Lucy.

We also recognized our seniors.  The team celebrates and honors our seniors on Senior Weekend during the season and had already given them these really cool pillows with pictures from their four years, which has become a fabulous tradition.  Still a fun tradition, but not quite as sleek as that, the coaching staff always gives the seniors a fleece blanket with their number on it and one of their old practice jerseys!  This year, the captains were all three seniors, so we also made them a Mug with pictures of each of them on it, which was fun, especially given our collective love our Dunkin Donuts coffee!  (I have come to realize that not everyone actually likes the coffee, but we all still enjoy the pre-game tradition!)  You can always use another vessel in which to put coffee!

 We also had three awards that the team voted on.  First was the Yellow Jersey Award, given to the person who gave the most consistent effort in practice on a daily basis throughout the season.  This award went to Kelly Ferrero!  Next we had the MCVB Spirit Award, which goes to the person who most consistently demonstrated the positive spirit of Middlebury Volleyball, thus encouraging others and bringing positivity in practice and games, regardless of how things were going.  This went to Beth Neal (for the 3rd year in a row, I might add!)  Our final award was for Panther Pride.  This award is given to the person who is the best teammate; someone who makes those around her better by holding themselves and their teammates accountable to a high standard of excellence, while also being supportive and understanding.  They must also live our mantra of "It's All About the Team!"  This award went to Jaime Donnelly!  These three were very deserving of these awards, and it's a nice tribute to them to be voted for these awards by their teammates.

We also had a special celebration on this day because it was Corley's Birthday!!  My daughter Lois  helped me make a cake, and she decorated it because that's just not in my skill set, so a special HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Corley as well!

Swift House does a fabulous job with our Brunch.  It's a picturesque country Inn with wonderful food!!  Again, I want to thank our parent group for helping us keep this tradition alive, and we had a full group there with all of our coaches buy one, and also our Faculty Affiliate with her daughter!  We were just missing Jesse, who helped us out as a volunteer coach this year, as well as our Trainer, Bethany, who couldn't make it either.  It was another really fun year, and we're already excited about next year.  The newbies have now gotten in ED, but we can't make that public yet to follow the rules, but although we're sad to say good bye to our seniors, we're happy to welcome new players for next year.  The cycle of teams keeps going!


Happy New Year, and may 2020 bring you all health and happiness!!

NESCAC Championship Weekend--Big Win over Amherst

We secured the 5th seed for the NESCAC Championships, and we were excited about our match up.  We were to play Amherst as the #4 seed, and we'd lost to them 0-3 in the regular season.  Our first Amherst match was a bit of a blur for me, as I personally was sicker than I've ever been for a match.  I think I had food poisoning, and was totally out of it.  Plus, half the team had been sick for that match as well, and although we played them on Maggie's birthday, that was possibly the only highlight of that match!  During that first match they hit a .286 compared to our .140, which we knew we could improve upon, among other things!

We were anticipating a great match this time around, and were excited to head to the Tournament, as always!  They main offense came from two very good outsides, and one very good middle, and we felt like we were much more balanced and could score from anywhere, giving us an advantage if we contained those three.  We did have a slight scare as Jane went down with a tweaked ankle in the last 20 minutes of practice Thursday night, but she bounced back the next day and had a monster match, hitting .370 with 13 kills!

Now, all that's really left to say is, WHAT A MATCH!!  It was crazy.  We were in that tiny, upstairs gym at Tufts, with no room around the court, and it was a battle!  We traded sets back and forth with us winning the first 25-17, losing the second 20-25, winning the 3rd 25-16, and then losing the 4th 25-18.  It was starting to feel like whoever was on the left side of the court was going to win, but in the end, we had to really earn the WIN and pulled it out 16-14 in the fifth set--for those superstitious ones, we scored 8 points first, and at 8 points, we switched to the left side (winning side) and went on to pull out the victory!!  We did have to overcome being down match point, but only once.


We jumped  out to an early lead 4-1, and held a couple point advantage the whole set until they tied it 13-13.  At that point, they went up by 1 to have match point.  We had a tremendous rally and some great defensive plays to stay in the rally, but eventually their outside had a hitting error to pull us even at 14-14.  We then went on to win the next two points on a kill by Laney, and then a setting error by their freshman setter to win the match!! 

We had great fan support from our families and fans, so that was much appreciated!!  Jill was able to get some great pics of our players with their families, which was really nice!  I'm sure we didn't quite get everyone featured with a picture, but we got a lot.

Amherst's only match point was a long, long rally, and featured some great digs by our team and was really the key point of that match because they had several decent opportunities to win the match after trailing the entire 4th set up to that point.  We just kept coming up with plays to keep the ball alive, which is something we'd talked about a lot over the season.  "Be smart but aggressive! No gifts--if you make a mistake, no worries, but have it be in an effort of trying to make the smart/aggressive play!"  That's what we did--we made plays, both offensively and defensively and hung in there until we could put the ball away, or they make an error, and they made an error, giving us the match!

We had a fun senior parent picture taken with these families that we've gotten to know so well over the course of their careers.  It's always bittersweet to say good bye to our seniors--it's so exciting to see what's ahead for them, but sad to see them leave our Program!  They'll always be a part of our MCVB Family, just no longer in uniform!  Also, Gigi's family showed up for what turned out to be her last match, which was a surprise for her--I think she may have known her parents were coming, but not her sister!

We hadn't won the Quarterfinal match in a couple of years, so it really felt good to get to play again the next day!!  After a quick dinner, albeit late dinner, we went back to our hotel and got a good night's sleep to prepare for the the Semi-final the next day against the host team, Tufts.  They'd really been playing well, and it seemed as though we'd spent our emotional and physical quotient the night before and we didn't really challenge Tufts all that much, unfortunately!

It was a great team effort on Friday night, and I think we all learned a lot by the match Saturday, so those of us returning know that we need to have a little more in our tanks against a tough foe, and no matter the outcome, we need to be confident and in attack mode, regardless of who we're playing, and what we did or didn't do the night before.  We kept to our pre-game ritual of finding a Dunks for some pep fuel, which is always fun!!  We'll be ready next year, but what a great finish overall.  Our Amherst match was our best match of the season, I think, and we have that upon which to build for the following year.

Halloween, Plus a Great Final Weekend of Regular Season

Plymouth State was our final HOME game of the season, and although they were 29-2 coming into the match, they were not nearly as strong of a team as any of our Conference opponents.  Maggie led the way as our only double digit kill leader with 13, followed by Corley with 8.  Then, all three of our RH's had 3 kills, lead by Beth with a .500 hitting %, while Jane hit .252.  Lucy led the team in Blocks with 4, and Gigi once again led the team in digs with 13.  That started our our final week of the season, and we headed to Williams Friday night and then on to Hamilton on Saturday for our final NESCAC weekend.

Halloween fell on Thursday, and we always have a pre-practice Halloween costume picture for fun!  This year the theme was Mario Cart, or something like that!  The team came through with a great turnout of costumes, which was very fun!  We had candy all week in my bucket outside my office door--I'm never really sure about that being a pre-practice snack, but it's only one week of the year, so we all indulge a bit!

We entered the weekend behind Williams in the standings (they were 5-3, and we were 4-4), but since they had to play both us and Amherst, and we had them and Hamilton, we felt strongly that we could leave the weekend with a 6-4 record and take over 5th place for the tournament.  At least we felt in control of our own destiny, which is always a good spot to be in.

The Williams match proved to be quite a test of wills!  We dominated the first set after an initial period of trading points to take a 20-12 lead.  They fought back, but we took the first set 25-16.  The second set was much closer, but had small runs by both sides.  We led 16-12 and 22-17, but they fought back to 24-23 before we closed out the second set on an attack error by them.  The third set was again a very close, and a back and forth set, but unfortunately, we let a lead of 17-13 and 22-20 get away from us.  We did have 3 match points in that set at 24-23, 25-24, and 26-25, each of the three put there by kills from Laney, but they prevailed to take the final three points and stay alive with a 28-26 set win.  The fourth set was led most of the way by Williams, but we tied it 16-16 and took a short-lived lead to go up 22-19, but they put together a string of points at the end of that set to force a 5th and decisive set.

After trading points to a 7-7 tie, Williams went on a mini run to get up 2 points, followed by trading points again.  We actually missed three serves in a row down the stretch to help put them up 11-14 with 3 match points to fend off!  We got three kills in a row, one each by Maggie, Laney and Corley to tie the game, which was CLUTCH!!  They had another kill to get another match point at 14-15, but two hitting errors on them, followed by a back row attack kill from Maggie sealed the win for us!!  What a match!  It was great composure for us to come back from 11-14, especially since we'd missed those three serves in a row, so I was really proud of the team for gritting this one out!

We all enjoyed our Thai dinner on the bus that night after the marathon 5 set match, which was nice.  We love our Thai food!  Hamilton started out the next day a little bit the same as we went to extra points to win the first set.  We traded points most of the first set, but we had to fight off 3 set points at 23-24, 25-26, and 26-27.  We missed one opportunity at set point at 25-24, but couldn't convert until two kills (Corley and Jaime) surrounding a Hamilton error sealed the set for us. After that, we cruised to the sweep with scores of 25-15, 25-12 to finish off the regular season.

With those two NESCAC victories, we secured the 5th seed for the Tournament, and will play Amherst in the Quarterfinals next weekend!  We're all excited about that match-up as we feel that we can definitely beat Amherst despite losing in straight sets to them much earlier in the season.  We all feel like we're such a different team at this point in the season than we were back in late September, which is a great feeling. 

Great Support for Parents' Weekend!

Senior Night is always a fun night.  We only had two home weekends this year, so it was an easy choice to have our "Parents' Weekend" on senior night also.  Our three seniors have given so much to our Program and we're so grateful for their leadership, competitive drive and spirit!  They will be sorely missed next year.

This was not actually their final home match since we had one more mid-week match at home vs Plymouth State, but it's so much better to celebrate senior night with all the families here that we just decided to do it on the weekend!

First up Friday night we had Bowdoin, and we had a battle with them.  The first set was very even with several tied scores, the last of which was 20-20, but they had a final push and won the first set 20-25.  The second set was more of the same, but we went up 22-18 before a late push by them beat us in extra points for a 24-26 score. We forced extra points in the third set to stay alive with a 26-24 win, again with small swings by each team.  In the 4th set we trailed early, but tied it at 12-12 and took the lead momentarily to go up 15-12, but they tied it again at 16-16 before they went on a final push to go up 20-16 and we couldn't get any closer and eventually fell in the 4th set 19-25.  Jane was ON FIRE, and hit .368 for the match and was our kills leader with 16 kills and only 2 errors on 38 swings.  Corley was also super efficient with 6 kills and no errors on 15 swings for a hitting % of .400!

Again, we felt like we competed hard and had moments of greatness, which is all good experiences to grow from and keep improving.  The next day we took on a strong Tufts team with only ONE loss on the season to date and a National ranking of #14 (the highest a NESCAC team has ever been ranked in the National poll!)


This was when we celebrated Senior Night!  All three seniors were pumped and ready to go as we battled with Tufts.  They got going in the first set and their offense was fast and good, and they jumped out to an early lead and took the first set 15-25.  The second set saw us challenge them more and force the action ourselves as we started to not only pass the ball better, but also get our middles involved and Corley caught fire and they couldn't touch her!  We forced extra points in that second set, but couldn't quite close the deal and lost 24-26.  The final set was more of the same and they got up early 3-8 and we never really challenged them again.

BOWDOIN HIGHLIGHT VIDEO

It's good experience to have, as usual, and we will take what we learned from these matches into practice next week and will become better as a result.  We had a wonderful dinner at Flatbread, as has become our tradition.  The team gave the seniors a memory pillow, which was awesome and we all had a fun night of celebrating team and family!!

October was full of great competition!

October is our most challenging month of competition.  We played our first Nationally ranked Conference opponent in 24th ranked Wesleyan at home over Homecoming and it was quite a test.  The very next weekend, we traveled to MIT to face three of the top NEWMAC teams, one of whom was also Nationally ranked (Babson #17).  Additionally, we played both MIT and Springfield, both of whom were Regionally ranked just ahead of us.

On our way to Boston, we stopped at a great rest area where our "Cali Girls" took this photo.  I'm told that no one from California actually says "Cali", which is why I put it in here!  :)

The first night we faced MIT, and it was a great match.  After going down 0-2, we fought back and took them to a 5th set!  In the final set we didn't quite pull it out, unfortunately, and lost 10-15.  Our team was wearing orange ribbons in honor of Bella's cousin who was diagnosed with a form of childhood Lukemia.  Very sad, but we're all pulling for him to have a full recovery!!  On hand to see our game in Cambridge was recent alum Becca Raffel '18, along with our faithful parent group, spearheaded by our senior parents of Jerry, Dean and Tracy, and the Neals!

After MIT, we stayed in our best hotel of the season, and then came back ready to WIN on Saturday.  First up was Springfield, and we actually dominated the match, which was great to see.  We swept them in three straight, and Maggie had an impressive outing hitting .464 with13 kills, no errors on 28 swings!  Lucy had 3 kills, no errors on 7 swings and 3 service aces.  As a team we hit .252 and had 8 service aces.

Following Springfield, we played Babson, who had just given Tufts their first loss of the season in a 5 set thriller.  We were very competitive with them, which was our goal.  The set scores were: 21-25-22-25, 25-27.  Although we did not prevail, we felt good about our efforts and continue to ahve the drive to improve and will keep working toward the end of the season and our Conference Championships.

MIT MATCH HIGHLIGHTS (turn on sound!)

First HOME NESCAC Weekend was Homecoming!!

October was a very challenging month for us, but that's the way we learn and grow!  During the month we played 3 Nationally ranked teams, and 7 Regionally ranked teams.  We started off with a Conference match with Trinity on Oct. 4, followed by a non-conference, but top 5 regionally ranked opponent, Endicott.

Trinity was an interesting team.  They didn't have a win yet in Conference, but they can hit, so they were very challenging at times.  Our serving proved to be too much for them as their receive struggled and then our offense caught fire, especially Corley!  She hit .733 for the match with 12 kills and only one error on 15 swings.  They really couldn't touch her, which was fun!  Gigi continued her hot streak defensively and lead all players with 23 digs!

The next day we traveled to Endicott, who was ranked 5th in New England and having a great season.  We also stopped for our traditional Dunks fix!  We were excited to play Endicott because, like Clarkson, they would probably end up being a top ranked team in our Region and it's just fun to see where you measure up with other top teams outside of our own Conference.  Although we did not win a set against them, all three sets were very competitive and the last two were 23-25.  It would have been really great to get at least one set, and I think if we had pulled out one of those tight sets, it could have shifted some momentum our way.  We were feeling pretty good about how we were playing and just want to keep focusing on getting better with every game and and every practice opportunity!

SKIDMORE VIDEO HIGHLIGHT LINK (have the sound on!)

Next up we had three HOME matches in a row with Skidmore and then Wesleyan and Conn College over Homecoming weekend.  Skidmore was a great lead-in match for Homecoming weekend as we had our best blocking game to date this year with 10 total blocks.  We also hit .369 as a team, which was our second best hitting game other than St. Mikes.  Everyone got in the game, (except for Laney who was sick), and it was a total team win, which was awesome!  Each person that came off the bench added positively to our outcome, which is exactly what we need to be the team we want to be!  We do most of our work in practice, and we feel like we're a deeper team this year than we've been in the past, and it was great to see that play out in a match also.

The next two matches were opposite extremes of our Conference.  We lost to Wesleyan badly on Friday night, really only competing in the final set (21-25).  It could have been the worst I've ever seen us play in the first two sets.  Only against Clarkson had we not gotten into double digits in points before, and the second set was 8-25.  Fortunately, we battled back to make the 3rd set respectable, and they still had all of their starters in, so it was a minor victory for us at that point.  The highlight of Friday night was seeing recent alums Claire and Isabel at the match!  It was a crazy busy weekend with it being Homecoming and also our first home weekend, so we had a lot of family and friends as well as alums back, so it was a great atmosphere!  Saturday, fortunately was a different story on the court.  We throttled Conn College, who really struggled with receive, bolstered by our 10 service aces!  We also hit .351 for the match, so our offense was just very efficient that Saturday!
 

CONN COLLEGE HIGHLIGHT VIDEO

Following the match, we had our Alumni Event at the Golf Course, which was very nice.  We had a couple of special alums back to help us celebrate 25 Years of MCVB!  Betsy Humphreys McNany ('95) and Julie Moriarty McDonough ('95) were both inaugural members of the Varsity Program, which had it's first year in 1994!  They had been instrumental in forming and running the club team and had advocated for the team to gain Varsity status, which finally happened for their senior year.  These guys were so impressed with our current team and enjoyed watching them, and also re-connecting with the College and our Team/Program!  (Julie actually still had her sweatshirt from that first year, which had "In the beginning..." on the front under the paw print!  Other alums back were Meg Anderson ('14), Katie Fehsenfeld ('06--a basketball alum at MIDD, who came out with her niece who is a current recruit of ours from Indiana--"Fehs" and I had a special bond at the time over being Hoosiers.)

September on the Road...

Wow, time sure flies when you're having fun...and when you're traveling for a month!  We're about to have our October Home weekends, which this year includes both Homecoming and then our Team Parents' Weekend!

However, before we get there, I need to update the first half of the season, spent traveling New England on a big, Premier Bus!  Our first weekend saw us beat two out of Region NY teams in Union and Manhattanville.  We got our money's worth, so to speak, as we went 4 sets with Manhattanville and it took us 5 to beat Union.  That was our opening weekend, and thus we were without our freshmen who were all on their Orientation trips!  After dropping the first two sets to Union, we rallied to come back and win in the 5th set 15-9.  It was great to see the team dig deep and be able to come from behind like that so early in the season.

The following week we had our closest trip of the season, to St. Michael's College just north of Burlington.  That was a pretty quick match, and we got to have takeout from my favorite restaurant--Pho Dang, which is right around the corner from St. Mikes! Although getting dinner there is a highlight for sure, the real highlight of the night was that this was our first match with our Freshmen!  Most of them got their first action of the season and performed well, which was really great to see. Lucy had 4 service aces and Laney hit .500 with 4 kills with only 1 error on 6 attempts along with a service ace.  Kelly ended with 4 assists and 2 digs, and Addie happened to be at the net for most of Lucy's service aces, so the ball barely got back to our side of the net!  Good things to come for these guys!  AND, Kelly's birthday was the next day, so we had to have cupcakes post-practice to celebrate!

That next weekend we went back to NY state to take on a perennial power Clarkson, along with other Liberty League opponents in Potsdam and St. Lawrence.  Clarkson was a tough match, and although we competed in two sets, we lost 0-3. The pace of the game was pretty fast for us at that point in the season, but it was a great experience because we know they'll be a top team in the NY Region and have been very competitive for years now.  Potsdam was not as challenging, ending in a sweep for us, and then St. Lawrence was a battle.  We competed back and forth to a 5 set loss, ending the fifth with a score of 15-12.  Good experience that we took back into practice the next week to continue to get better.

 VIDEO HIGHLIGHT LINK:  Colby-Sawyer (be sure the sound is on because there's fun music with it!)

Our lone HOME match of September was against Colby-Sawyer, which was a great first home match.  We out-powered them and easily swept them in three straight, which was a great lead-in for our first Conference matches coming up that weekend to face Colby and Bates.  Friday night we traveled all the way up to Maine where we battled with Colby but came out with the sweep.  The following day we again battled it out with Bates to a 5 set match that we pulled out after going down 1-2 in sets to win the 4th and 5th sets, with another squeaker in the 5th 15-12, but in our favor this time!  We are still learning and growing and improving, and to the 5 set matches are great experience for our relatively young team who's now 7-2!!

We had two more team birthdays the week we played Amherst--Emma on the 24th, and Maggie's birthday was actually on the Friday we played Amherst!  I'm afraid I didn't get a picture of the wonderful treats Maggie's mom brought us down at Amherst, but we did our post-practice tradition of a little dessert treat for Emma's birthday!


September ended with us heading to Amherst even though it was Fall Family Weekend at MIDD.  Because it was one game only, we went down and back in one day, which worked out well so players could get to hang out with their parents at MIDD if they wanted to.  I was pretty sick, and a handful of the kids were still battling various illnesses and remnants of symptoms, and although we competed hard, we did not prevail down in Hadley, MA that night.

It was a crazy busy month spent mostly on the road, but we'll be home for TWO weekends in October, which will feel great.