As the 2023-2024 girl’s varsity volleyball team jumps up and down celebrating the State Championship win, they acknowledge all of their hard work that has paid off. However, it is now a new season with a new group of girls and the team is looking to move forward by not focusing too much on the past.
Second-year head coach of the varsity girl’s volleyball team Coach Kat Thyer plans to lead the girls to another amazing season. However, she acknowledges how new the team is, and how focused they are on getting better without looking back so much.
“We have been very mindful about not really trying to talk about last year,” Thyer said. “Obviously, we have brought it up a few times, but we are very aware of the fact that this is a new team. We want to do a to do a lot of the similar things that we did last year, but we’re trying to leave that conversation out,”
Tyler Parouse ’25 is one of three team captains this year. She has made many adjustments from last season to now. With the loss of 13 seniors, the team is almost completely brand new. Parouse feels that, as captain, she gets the opportunity to connect with the girls on the team even more than she would have had she not been captain. Although this year will be different, the team uses last year’s state championship win as motivation to get another.
“Everybody wants to do it again,” Parouse said. “We had a meeting at the beginning of the year where we set our goals and our biggest thing was winning another banner. We know that’s going to be a completely different journey than it was last year, even though the end goal is the same because we’re brand new. So it’s going to be a lot more difficult. We need to find trust in each other on the court, which is huge because nobody really knows anybody that well yet.”
Parouse acknowledges that the new group of girls are trying to find their own identity and separate themselves from last year’s team. In addition, their practices this year have been looking a little different with the new group of girls, since everyone brings different strengths to the table and everyone is figuring out what each girl has to offer.
“I think our practices are a little more intense than they were last year because there is a lot riding on this, and time is ticking,” Parouse said. “We need to start figuring out how to work well with each other. I think everybody came into the season a little too relaxed. However, now we have ramped up practices and we don’t really have any days off. We don’t have that luxury anymore this year.”
Second captain of the varsity girl’s volleyball team, Lauren Sassower ‘27, observes that the team does feel pressure to perform this year coming off their championship win last season and that pressure has helped sharpen their competitive edge.
“It gives us encouragement and drives us to want it more,” Sassower said. “Our coaches have helped a lot. They always remind us, we need to keep the same goals and work just as hard.”
Ella Del Pero ‘26 is another captain; she’s returned from an injury that had her out for the first five games. Del Pero feels that the loss of last year’s seniors has given the team the title “underdog.” Contrarily to Sassower, she believes their new title has relieved the pressure of living up to last season’s championship season.
“Everyone knows we lost seniors,” Del Pero said. “This year, we’re the underdog. And I love that because we get to surprise teams. No one knows who we are or what we stand for.”
As many things this season are new, so is the coach of the JV girl’s volleyball team and assistant coach for the varsity team Otis Glasgow. Glasgow has played volleyball since he was in seventh grade and started coaching the sport in 2019 at Marlborough. Since, he has also coached at Buckley, and after hearing about the Campbell Hall program he felt it would be a good fit for him. Although his main focus is not on wins or losses, he believes the team has been improving greatly and that JV is meant to prepare the girls for when they move on to varsity.
“I want us to focus on progressing and we are definitely progressing a lot,” Glasgow said. “This last match that we had versus West Ranch was the best match that we’ve had yet. We were playing together as a unit and it was fantastic. We are getting way more competitive and learning how to play together as a team. I’m really excited to see what this team looks like at the end of the season. Also, I want our JV program to obviously be a great experience for all the girls who are in it currently, but I also want it to be a fantastic prerequisite for them going into varsity, giving them the tools to hold their own on that varsity squad.”
