First and foremost, a BIG and heartfelt thank you to our generous donors who helped us raise the necessary funds to allow us to once again compete at Nationals this year.  We couldn’t have accomplished it without your support.

Secondly.  Nationals is over and thus concludes our 2011-2012 season.  It’s been a great year with wonderful additions to the team and memories to serve us all.  Once again, Nationals was a huge success and great fun for us to compete against teams from around the country and partake in a great competitive environment.  We can only hope to continue to be a part of it.

And now for our tournament recap.

First day of play was Thursday, April 5 and saw us in a four team pool in the Women’s Division IAA competition.  We would play Nebraska, University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, and UCSD, in that order.  Our first game put us up against Nebraska (Freshman Ashley Hasebroock’s hometown team).  Easy win in two (25-17, 25-20) for us and bragging rights for Ashley.  Nothing beats a win over your hometown competition.  After reffing a match, our second match of the day saw us playing UW-LaCrosse.  We took the first set under control and won it with ease (25-20), however they surged in the second set and came out with the W to force a third set (23-25).  After that, BC took a take-no-prisoners mentality and finished LaCrosse off with a third set win and a W for the match (15-9).  We don’t mess around.  Our third and final match of the day pitted us against the number one team in our pool UCSD, and hometown rival for senior Marilyn Sullivan.  First set, we surged with energy and won by 2 to shock the UCSD Tritons (25-23).  Second set didn’t bode as well for us.  They came back with a vengeance and at one point left us reeling with a score of 4-22.  We came back and managed to scrape out 14 to regain some of our dignity to force a third set (14-25).  However, UCSD was on a high and won the set to secure first place in the pool for the day and no challenges matches for the Championship flight the next day (15-7).  That placed us second overall in our pool and left us to play a challenge match in the morning for a chance at the Championship flight.

Second day of play began with our challenge match against NC State, fellow ACC rival.  The first set of the match was a tense-filled match with control going to both teams before BC squeaked away with a win (28-26).  Second set proved much better for us as we took control from the start and finished with NC State going down to the Consolation flight (25-13).  Our win placed us in a three team pool in the Championship flight as a third-seeded team with DePaul and Washington State as our fellow competitors.  We played DePaul first and lost in two sets (25-17, 25-22).  Trying to shake off the loss to DePaul, we played WSU immediately after and lost in two again (25-10, 25-23), which placed us in the Silver Division Brackets for our final day of play.

Third and final day of Nationals dawns.  Single-elimination from this point on, with the possibility of four matches total for the day.  Our first match seeds us against Kentucky, and we were slightly intimidated by them.  However, once play started it was easy to see who the better team was and we waltzed past them in the first set for the W (25-15).  The second set saw a surge of energy from Kentucky, who took the lead and forced us to hunker down and play our hearts out.  A huge turnaround saw BC take control once again and came back for the win (26-24).  The game ended with a satisfying block from Lora Manley to show Kentucky who they decided to mess with.   To further accentuate the win, Marilyn Sullivan smashed an overpass into one of Kentucky’s outsides, forcing her to sit out several points to regain her composure.  A huge uplift for us, as we had reached the second round of bracket play and still had a chance to win our pool.  Second rounds saw us once again playing UCSD, and we were ready for revenge.  However, they knew us well from before and even with the support of our BC men’s team, we fell short of advancing to the semi’s in two (25-10, 25-22).

Our final placement in the tournament saw us tied for 18th in the Women’s Division IAA competition and a higher overall ranking than what we came in as.  A successful and memorable Nationals once again, and a final farewell to senior captain Marilyn Sullivan, who will graduate from BC in May.  You will be missed greatly!

A final thank you to all our fans for your support this season!  We hope to see you on the sidelines next year!

Hello friends!  It’s been a while….  The club team has been quietly preparing for Nationals these past few weeks.  Unfortunately, we only had one other tournament after our NCVF Ranking tournament and as such, we’ve been under the radar since February.  We placed third in our final regular season tournament, a huge success on our part.

And now… it’s April!  Which means, Nationals is next weekend!  Come Wednesday, we shall be making our way west to Kansas City, Missouri for our second ever Nationals appearance.  Three days of volleyball are in store for us… and we can’t wait!!  Look for daily updates from us about our progress in Nationals!