Sunapee
During the Sunapee High girls volleyball match with Winnisquam early last season, the Lakers took a shellacking in a 3-0 loss. It was only the second match of the season, but the Lakers thought they had the makings of a championship team that all of a sudden didn’t seem so invincible.
At the time, Sunapee had no idea that this would be the last match they would lose on their way to beating the same Winnisquam club in the NHIAA Division III championship game.
“Going into the season, we knew we could pull it off,” said senior Meg Frederick. “We had everybody back from the year before. It was the perfect lineup.”
Frederick felt there was no chemistry that day. It certainly hasn’t been an issue since.
Winning championships in Sunapee is no novelty, be it baseball, softball, basketball or soccer. Even the bass finishing almost won a state title, coming in second in 2014. Last year, Laker teams not only won the volleyball title, but championships in girls basketball and softball. They were also runners-up in baseball, girls skiing and a semifinalist in girls soccer. Most students go through high school without winning a state championship. Fredrick has been on five state title teams.
However, title trips have been infrequent for the volleyball team — the last one came 19 years ago before last fall. There was a spell from 1980 to 1997 when the Lakers made 10 trips to the championship game, winning four times. Dave Barry was the coach for all those trips to the finals, but when he left a few years later, not only had the well gone dry a bit, but the sport started changing.
Volleyball was new on most New Hampshire high school campuses in the 1980s, but it’s become like the other sports in the past 25 years or so — if you wanted, you can play pretty much all year. A number of schools have also added boys teams to their NHIAA lineups.
“We now have club volleyball and Junior Olympics,” said Sunapee coach Tom Reney, whose daughters played club volleyball in Concord. “They would have Sunday practices that would last two hours or more and take trips all over New England for matches from November to May.
“The sport has also become quite sophisticated,” said Reney. “Years ago, it was not complicated.”
Sunapee opens the season on Sept. 7 in Moultonborough, playing eight of its first nine matches on the road.
“How we are going to do is pretty unpredictable at this point,” said senior Hanna Drummond. “I have high hopes and I did as well last year, then we got beat by Winnisquam. Boy,was that a wake-up call.”
Frederick thinks the chances for a repeat are pretty good, as tough teams from last year like Winnisquam and Conant have lost a lot of players to graduation. “Nute looks like they have quite a lot of players coming back,” she said.
Graduation also took a big bite out of the Sunapee roster. All-state players Abby Palin and Rachel Malanga have moved on. Still, with Frederdick, who said she thinks she has grown another inch and now stands at an even 6 feet, is a returning all-stater. She will be joined by veterans Drummond, Abi Downey and Elsa Pierson.
“We certainly hope we can make it to the final four, but I really don’t know,” said Downey.
Downey, like most of her teammates, feels blessed to play in an environment that emphasizes athletics and well as academics.
“I really like this school,” she said. “We have coaches who really care about us.”
“They can be firm, but they have our best interest at heart.” Hammond added. “They want us to succeed.”
The Lakers have done plenty of that lately. It sometimes doesn’t hurt to get the occasional wake-up call, however.