In the final week of our freshmen season, we have just begun to realize how much Dartmouth means to us, even after only being here for a couple of months. From the first day nerves as we stood on the track one early August morning, facing our first sprint test (an obstacle which many of us freshmen admit to losing sleep over), to our last road trip – complete with shopping, breakfast buffets, and Zombieland – and the many moments in between, we have truly become a part of Dartmouth Volleyball. Between practice and class, we have had time to experience the classic freshmen fall traditions, including camping out on the DOC trips, running around the bonfire during Homecoming, and cheering on our football team as they crushed Columbia. Our defining experiences, however, have been with our teammates, both on and off the court. Since the day we received our Big Sister packages in the mail a couple of weeks before preseason began, we knew that we were among a very lucky group of freshmen and were becoming a part of something special. Since we’ve been in Hanover, not only our captains, Annie and Amber, but all of the upperclassmen have given us invaluable advice on every imaginable topic and welcomed us with wide-open arms. It is hard to imagine the season is almost over.
The days of wondering if we could ever again walk up stairs without wincing led to our first games in the blink of an eye. It's hard to grasp how quickly our final weekend has come, and while we feel as if we've been a part of this community for much longer than 3 months, the season has gone by more quickly than we could've ever imagined. Especially throughout this second half of our Ivy season, we have grown even stronger as a team, our patience and determination especially evident in the fact that 6 out of our 12 Ivy matches have gone to 5 games! We have celebrated exciting close victories over Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell with the great hope of success this upcoming weekend. There is nothing more that we could have wanted out of our first season.
However, these tangible achievements on the court are not what has defined our experience here at Dartmouth. In fact, some of our most memorable volleyball experiences have nothing to do with nets or the gym or volleyballs at all, but rather occurred "behind the scenes." None of us will ever be able to forget the lyrics to Superbass, Kendall's favorite song, after hearing it five times a day during preseason, and we will always remember Maddy's meowing. The moments we spent on broken down buses, eating dinner as a team in FoCo, and just walking across the beautiful Green (which was recently covered in snow!) on the way to practice have reminded us time after time of how lucky we are to be here at Dartmouth and on this team. After hundreds of hours together in the gym, weight room, locker room, and traveling all around New England, we feel like we're a part of something much bigger than just another college volleyball team, and we can't thank our team enough for that.
- Taylor Bradley '15, Liz Brailsford '15, Maura Manley '15, Lucia Pohlman '15, Alex Schoenberger '15
