By Tayla MacPherson
“They are unusually close as a class, have really good energy, promote strong team culture and they are just really good humans,” head women’s volleyball coach Mark Massey said about the senior class. There are six volleyball seniors this season: Hannah Stinson, Shelby Kantner, Erika Smith, Moira McVicar, Rachael Garrison, Katie Rice and Rita Dexter. Each of them have made an immensely strong mark on the women’s volleyball program.
Although the women’s volleyball team has had an inconsistent season, Coach Massey explained two starters were placed on bench due to unexpected injuries. “What I have appreciated most is that they have worked really hard to fill those gaps. They have helped match our expectations. What you always want from every team you coach is hard work,” Massey said.
Overall this season, the women Loggers are 7-10 and 4-6 in conference. They are tied for sixth place with Willamette in the Northwest Conference Standings. These statistics may not sound amazing; however, the senior women alone have 356 kills and 637 digs this season. This class holds the highest scores in all categories.
Individuals who have been recognized by the conference include Rita Dexter, holding the fourth-best hitting percentage in the league at 0.262; Moira McVicar with the fourth-best assists per set at 8.75; and Rachael Garrison with the fifth-highest number of digs at 281.
Senior Erika Smith (Bellingham, Washington) discusses the challenges and the advantages of the senior culture. “Our senior class is best friends on and off the court, but are still very competitive with one another. Our previous upperclassmen shared with us that we need to be super inclusive and ignore the grade boundary, so I think that has been one of our strengths this season. The most challenging thing that can happen on the court is if someone else is playing over you and it is one of your best friends playing over you,” Smith said.
Like Smith said, the team pays little attention to age. First-year student Hannah Wright (Belmont, California) describes her experience with the senior class. “They are overall a very welcoming group. Even though they are a very close-knit group of girls I still feel like I am one of them; there isn’t any grade separation,” Wright said.
Since this group of women is so unique and supportive of one another, they have yet to experience a major challenge throughout their four years at Puget Sound. Katie Rice (Glendora, California), a senior hitter for the team, describes her appreciation for her teammates. “We are abnormally supportive of each other even when we play over one another, which is very unusual in teams. Many times, that can cause a problem with team dynamics and culture,” Rice said.
Some goals the senior class has set to improve the team are a higher team GPA, team-first mentality and selflessness. Senior Shelby Kantner (Spokane, Washington) explains some improvements the team would like to make in the last stages of season. “We want to improve on starting faster and coming out hot in the first minutes of the game, instead of starting slow. Once we have momentum we do really well, but we have to reach that point faster. A part of that is having the team hit above 0.250 or hitting a higher average each game,” Kantner said.
Kantner explained a goal the senior class has always strived to achieve. “One of our goals since freshmen year was to all play together and all be able to contribute on game day, and we did that,” Kantner said. “All the seniors this season either start the majority of matches or contribute a solid number of minutes to each game. This is a quality not all teams have. Having a class with such high expectations for one another and upholding them throughout all four years is inspirational.”