Caleb Nelson | Sports Editor | cnelson3@mail.smcvt.edu
“Fighting every single game, staying hungry, putting in the work in practice,” said Beth Syverson, ’23, assistant coach of the St. Michael’s College women’s volleyball team and player for three seasons.
Every time this volleyball team takes the court they are playing with their key pillars in mind: grit, confidence, trust/vulnerability, unity, and unwavering, says setter Alexandra Báez Rentas, ’25, who has been a captain since her sophomore year.
Last fall, these pillars helped St. Michael’s College women’s volleyball make history by ending a 28-year playoff drought and securing the 7th seed in the Northeast-10 Conference Championship.
Dana Edwards, ’26, helps bring the team a win against Middlebury on Sept. 10, 2024.
“It was such an emotional moment. I was crying, a lot of the people in the room were crying, they were all going nuts, it was an experience I am never going to forget,” said Lauren Brough, the first full-time head coach of the program, describing the moment she shared news of a playoff berth with the team.
In regular season play, the Purple Knights finished the 2023 season with a 6-12 record and a 4-7 record amongst NE10 competitors. This surprise success did not happen overnight, Brough is starting her fifth season with the program, her first three seasons she spent time as an assistant coach.
Brough believes an increase in scholarship money from the school four years ago and having a full-time head coach dedicated to bettering the program contributed to the recent success. “We have done a pretty good job of making sure individuals grow when they come here and we can hone their skill set, change things that need to be changed, and develop them as players and people,” Brough said.
By adding new on-court sessions to work out kinks and having a licensed mental health counselor work with the players individually and as a team, Brough has brought a new perspective to the program.
“We just put all of our fears aside….we worked on focusing on the team and not our fears, like the fear of winning, fear of losing, I think the switch happened the first week,” Rentas said as she talked about the immediate impact of having a therapist accessible last year.
Head coach Lauren Brough smiles to her coaching staff as her team prepares to start set 3 of 5 played against Plymouth State University on Saturday, Sep. 7, 2024.
From 2016 to 2022, the volleyball program had a 7–108 record, but it wasn’t the team record that wasn’t clicking, it was also the team dynamics. “It was pretty much a broken program…and not a great team environment,” Syverson said.
Syverson highlighted how she saw the program take a turn when Jeanne Nauheimer Dorf ’09 served as head coach for the program from the 2020 season to 2022. Syverson described how, when Dorf was hired, she had a lot of “damage control to do”.
When Brough took over the full-time head coaching job, she focused on helping the players enjoy the sport they were playing, and everything changed. Looking forward to this upcoming season we can expect the team to build from the success they experienced last season. Brough hints at what we will see from her team this season: a volleyball team that never quits, constant hard work, and unmatched team trust.
“We know now what we need to do, last year was pretty much a trial run… it’s more of just playing the St. Mike’s volleyball we know we can play and show up as the program we’ve been trying to show up as,” said Aaliyah Huihi-Martinez, ‘25, who serves as the program’s defensive specialist, and libero.
Even though the players want to build off their increase in wins last season Brough has different hopes and desires for her team in the near future. “My hope is each person on our team feels valued in their role, my hope is they can look at their own goals and win deep verses just the wins and losses, and to just enjoy the season,” Brough said. She hopes her team can consistently be successful this year and strives to increase student support. Her goal is to see both sets of bleachers pulled out and filled with students watching this exciting sport and believes that if the team can keep winning this will happen.
“We have been waiting for our time to come and it has finally come and we are going to take full advantage of that,” Huihi-Martinez said.