After taking down fifth-seeded Tufts last Friday (25-21, 25-20, 19-25, 25-16) to advance to the semifinal round of the NESCAC championship, the Middlebury volleyball team saw their season come to a close with a difficult loss to Bowdoin on Saturday (21-25, 24-26, 13-25). The Polar Bears would go on to defeat Williams in the championship round on Sunday, earning a berth in the NCAA tournament; the Panthers, finishing their season at 18-7 and 7-3 in the conference, were left to wonder at what could have been, despite having thoroughly exceeded the on-paper expectations for a team with no seniors that finished 12-12 last year.
“We’ve had some lopsided matches recently (good wins, and tough losses), and I think we’re learning what it feels like to really play well together, and we just need to do that consistently this weekend,” Head Coach Sarah Raunecker said. “I like where we are now heading into NESCAC’s. If we play well, we can compete with anyone there so we feel like we’re in control of our destiny.”
After defeating Tufts in their last regular season game, Middlebury drew the Jumbos in the first round of the NESCAC tournament. The Jumbos showed up ready to play, hoping to exact their revenge, but the Panthers refused to budge. The score ran all the way to 22-22 before some strong play from middle hitter Gabi Rosenfeld ’17 and outside hitter Becca Raffel ’18 allowed Middlebury to wrap up the first set. The Panthers capitalized upon that momentum in the second, racing out to going ahead 13-4 and then coasting to a 24-16 lead. Tufts stuck around for a bit, stringing together four straight points, but ultimately fell on a service error that gave the Panthers a 2-0 lead.
With their backs against the wall, the Jumbos fired off a quick eight points to start off the third and would lead the rest of the way. Middlebury made a push to get within five at 19-14, but Tufts regained control with three straight and went on to notch their first set victory, 25-19.
In the fourth set, the match concluded with some hard-nosed play. The two teams fought to a 13-13 tie before the Panthers began to distance themselves from the Jumbos, building a 17-14 lead and then running away with a 25-16 victory and the match. Notable players for Middlebury include Raffel, who led both sides with 15 kills, Rosenfeld, who had 1 solo block and 4 block assists, libero Emily Kolodka ’18 who dug up 25 balls and setter Hannah Blackburn ’17 who dished out 36 assists.
“We weren’t even thinking about the fact that it was Tufts,” outside hitter Alice Roberts ’17 said. “This tournament, we went in saying that we can only focus on what we’re going to do — and we want to win the whole thing. Tufts came back and definitely fought, but we were playing too well.’”
On Saturday, the Panthers found themselves in the opposite situation, trying to get back at a Bowdoin team that had handed them their first conference loss back in September. However, some of the consistency problems that plagued Middlebury at times earlier in the season reared their heads once more, and little errors prevented the Panthers from stringing together runs when they needed them. In the first set, the Panthers stuck with the Polar Bears until Bowdoin, leading 15-14, rattled off seven straight points to go up 22-14. The Panthers fought back to make it 24-21 before the Polar Bears finished off the set.
Always resilient, Middlebury pushed Bowdoin to a 19-19 tie in the second set. The Polar Bears scored four straight points, but the Panthers responded with a 5-1 run of their own to tie things up at 24-24. The Polar Bears took control, scoring two quick points to take a 2-0 lead in the match.
In the third set, nothing seemed to go Middlebury’s way. Bowdoin jumped out to an early lead and never took their foot off the pedal, closing things out with a 25-13 third set victory.
“Our serve-receive went very well in the first two sets,” Roberts said. “Once Bowdoin started to control the match a little bit, we got a little disjointed.We kept bringing ourselves back — we were composed the entire time — but Bowdoin just played a great game. They had almost no errors, whereas we had some unforced errors here and there.”
Looking forward, good things seem to be on the horizon for the Panthers. They return every member from a squad that featured a number of players on NESCAC leaderboards. Raffel finished third in the conference in kills per set with 3.80. Middle blocker Melanie English ’17 was second in blocks with an average of 1.04 each set, and Blackburn was third in assists with 9.68 per set.
Roberts shared that the team is even more excited to see where the added experience, along with a handful of incoming freshmen, might be able to take them next time around.
“Honestly, people were looking at our team as though we weren’t going be great this year, but I was very much expecting us to play well because our team was first-year and sophomore heavy last year, playing-wise,” Roberts said. “Now I’m extremely excited for next year because we went this far, with this team that’s not changing—if anything, we’ll just be adding some more players,” she said.
