“And your 2023 NVL champions….. The Woodland Hawks!”
The Woodland Hawks volleyball team won their second straight Naugatuck Valley League championship on November 1, 2023. They beat their rival Seymour 3-2.
The first three sets were all thrillers, all within five points. Seymour took the first and third sets, with Woodland taking the second. Then, the Hawks turned the momentum to their favor, winning the fourth set 25-16. They took that into the 5th and last set, going up 15-9 and winning their second straight championship.
Woodland was led by the NVL tournament’s Most Valuable Player, Ava Bianchini. Everyone on the team played well, no single player won them the game, they won as a team.
“It was exciting. It was really cool to see how our team reconstructed this year and was able to pull through and win against a team that already won two times before,” Bianchini said.
A lot of the team’s success came from the work they put in and changes that they made as a team for the tournament.
“We worked a lot on our defense, and we were going past the time we were allowed. We were putting in a lot of work, some days two and a half hours of practice, and we went 10 or 13 days in a row without a break,” said senior captain Erin Donnelly. “We worked a lot better because we had a different defense at that time, and we were able to work together as a team.”
Donnelly also thought that the whole team just played better in the whole tournament, saying “That’s the best we’ve played that entire season.”
Both of them saw this second championship as more significant and more important to them than the first. One reason was that it was almost a completely different roster than last year.
Their best attacker in the championship game was Lindsay Koliani with 14 kills. The best server was Erin Donnelly with 23 serves and only one error.. The best blocker was Emma Liscomb, with two blocks. The best assister was Sophomore Hannah Mishler with 26.
The Hawks had a very successful season this year and look to get their third straight NVL championship next season to finish their 3-peat.
