Wellesley’s athletic teams are a great source of pride for the college. However, volleyball has exemplified that feeling by winning 18 home games in a row. The squad’s last five games have been consecutive wins. Many students wonder how they have been able to accomplish this feat.
Practice is intense. Players have to be at the top of their game every day, literally. Head Coach Dorothy A. Webb explains, “We have daily, intense practices or matches, except Sundays, during our competitive season, which extends throughout most of the fall semester. Practices are about two hours long for most players… Team members must be extremely disciplined and organized in their academics”. This means eating healthily, studying hard after long practices, and sleeping an adequate amount.
Coach Webb further talked about how volleyball is a team sport, which means that it is vital that everyone cooperates and works together. Without a good team dynamic, it is nearly impossible to succeed. Being part of a sport like volleyball requires teammates to communicate and avoid blaming one another for mistakes. Rather, everyone must strive to unify the team and become better together. Webb believes that their team is relatively balanced in terms of keeping morale high under every situation. She says, “While we are, generally speaking, working exceptionally well together as one unit towards common, shared goals, daily communication and support of each other are challenging and a great learning experience for everyone.”
Another important ability for a team is to be able to make a comeback when they have rough beginnings in their games. While this is often tough, Wellesley volleyball has been able to manage this in a plethora of their games. Webb says about the team’s experience against Wheaton, we weren’t playing our best, most consistent volleyball and we dropped the first set. Therefore, we were forced to quickly re-focus and stay aggressive, while also minimizing mistakes… I think our team members… responded well under pressure.”
Every team, no matter how strong, must have a goal in mind in order to increase their agility and generally better their technique. Wellesley’s volleyball team is currently working on blocking and middle transition. However, when asked about what the team would be working on to improve their matches, Coach Webb responded that, “…tomorrow it will be something new, based on our match play.” This is the mark of a good coach and teacher, which is definitely contributing to volleyball’s success. Furthermore, the players analyze their game-play and strive to fix any error on a per-game basis, a strategy which has proven to be very successful for them.
Overall, the Wellesley Varsity Volleyball team has had wonderful success. The team will face Bowdoin College this Friday at the Wesleyan Invitational.