Volleyball Undefeated
As red and blue crowds crammed into Love Gym chanting for their teams, Big Red volleyball players were spiking the ball towards scrambling smurfs. After three consecutive set wins, Exeter vanquished the Andover team, adding another victory to their undefeated season.
The first set, according to senior captain Mia Glinn, was a chance for the Exeter team to get out their nerves. “I think a lot of our errors were due to E/a jitters and just getting it all out there and making all of our little mistakes in the first set,” Glinn said. “And then once we won that first set, we knew we could do it. So it was just [a question of] how much can we win. How many points can we beat them by?”
After the initial win, the team made fewer errors and won the second set handily, according to senior captain Joy Liu. “We had the momentum from winning the first set,” she said. “We won by a good margin and got used to playing in front of the big crowd.”
Finally, as senior captain Angelle Diamond described, during the final game, the Exeter team “put [Andover] to bed.”
Upper Dylan O’Day noted that the difference in Exeter and Andover’s games was technique. “We definitely out-served them and passed way better than [Andover],” she said. “That really helped us win by as much as we did.”
Much of the Exeter teams’ success, Diamond explained, is credited to their purposeful training before the game itself. “Andover relies heavily on their true middles, and rightly so because they jump touch really high,” she said. “We also knew that they run really quick sets, unlike any other team in our league. So, we practiced blocking for them and we got a few blocks.”
Manager and upper Kilin Tang explained that Girls’ Volleyball’s longtime coach, Bruce Shang, greatly contributed to the success of the team. “He crafts very purposeful drills to target the team’s weaknesses and the strengths of upcoming opponents,” Tang said.
Post-graduate Annah Shaheen added that the Exeter team also worked hard to improve their own playing. “We were really working on eliminating errors, which really helped to not giving them any free points and they had to earn all the points that they got,” she said.
A highlight of the game, according to Glinn, was Shaheen’s consistent playing. “She had a really high hitting percentage, which was really awesome,” she said. “We could count on [Shaheen] to get some great kills.”
Another important player was setter Liu, who supported most of the passes and kills of the team. “I always like to shout out Joy because she does so much for our team and her ability to take our passes even if they’re bad and make them into sets so we can get kills off of them is just so great,” Glinn said.
Most importantly, Diamond noted, the relationship between members of the team contributed to their cohesivity on court. “Our chemistry’s really good,” she said. “So I think that along with a lot of hard work and practice and dedication, knowing how good we can be has produced really strong outcomes.”
Though volleyball has had an undefeated season, Liu noted that this year was initially going to be a rebuilding year for the team. “We graduated a lot of people last year, but it turns out the team really clicked going into preseason,” she said. “Our libero and one of our outside hitters are new, but we’re a really cohesive unit and that’s why we’ve been doing so well this year.”
After leaving the team this year, Glinn will miss the bonds the team has forged amongst one another. “I’m definitely going to miss the chemistry that we have this year because I think our team is so strong—we just clicked together really easily and we’re so really connected team,” she said. “I think out of my four years of playing volleyball at different other schools, this team probably has the most chemistry, which shows in our records.”