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Lehigh Volleyball Blog with Maxie McCoy

Maxie McCoy is a junior on the Lehigh Volleyball team.  A journalism major, McCoy appeared in 78 sets for the Mountain Hawks last season, averaging 1.03 kills per set in that time.  She finished third on the team in assisted blocks and total blocks, including seven blocks in a win over archrival Lafayette.  A member of the Patriot League Academic Honor Roll, Maxie maintains a 3.82 grade point average in the classroom and has made appearances on the Dean’s List.  She is also a member of the Student-Athlete Executive Council.  Check back soon for her latest update.

The End – April 19, 2009
Well the spring season is coming to a close, but the hard work and training has only begun! Summer workouts, as we all know, are crucial to our individual and team success. I know all the girls are geared up and ready for it though! This spring has been a time of serious improvements and mannnnnn did we see it during our spring tournament at Penn. We played Temple , UPenn, Rider and Army! The freshmen, especially, were jumping higher and moving quicker than ever. It made me miss my days of youth when the area of improvement is SO visible. Now I’m just an old woman sitting on the sidelines with a bum ankle!

Although the past six weeks have personally been a trying time as I deal with this injury, it has helped me realize the value of health! Goodness gracious how I have taken my body for granted! Although physically the spring has posed more obstacles than I had expected, it has brought some personal achievement as the results of something I worked on last fall are coming through. Last year, after being treated for melanoma, I started working with Roseann Corsi on a campus-wide Skin Cancer Awareness Night. The night, which brought in a top melanoma specialist from the area, ultimately led to talks with Joe Sterrett, the Dean of Athletics, and Jack Foley, the head of sports medicine about getting sunscreen available for all outdoor athletes. After working with our dermatologist, Jack was able to order sunscreen fit for athletes, which will arrive this week and be bottled for every team—SO exciting!!! I couldn’t be more thankful for everyone’s help in this initiative. I actually wrote my column about this very topic if you want to take a look, click here.

That is it for now. Tomorrow night is the Student Athlete Formal so I promise to update you on all the fun that the volleyball team has!

TO RETURN TO THE LEHIGH STUDENT-ATHLETE BLOGS HOME, CLICK HERE.

The ups and downs of spring – March 19
I hope the luck of the Irish was with everyone this week as you celebrated St. Patty’s day! It has been quite the week for Lehigh Volleyball! We have had a number of recruits in and out of our gym, which has been a lot of fun to meet the prospective players and share a bit about out own personal experience with them. Outside of team practices and lifting, I know the girls have been pretty swamped with work and exams, but as our freshman are probably learning right now, post-spring break is filled with nonstop craziness!

The latest from Lehigh volleyball – October 26

Sorry for the momentary leave of absence in my blog writing, but it sure has been a crazy couple of weeks for Lehigh volleyball, which I cannot wait to fill you in on.

After my last post, we were gearing up for our big match against Lafayette. Practices were intense that week because we knew that in order to beat our big rival we had to practice and play our hearts out. It’s an interesting thing with such intense rivalries like Lafayette…the game can easily become bigger than itself as you can allow yourself to get tied up with emotion to such an extent you lose your focus on all the things it takes to get the big W. After all, a win against Lafayette is just as important as a win against any other team. Our goal was to stay focused on the match at hand, play our hearts and kick some leopard booty in the meantime!

Mo, B Moose and Danielle took most of their Friday morning to surprise the team with some serious locker decorations that all had a common theme. They put pump up posters and decorations to get the girls psyched up with. The team LOVED it and gotten even more pumped to take down the leopards.

And that is JUST WHAT WE DID!!!! It was one of the most intense matches I’ve ever played in my career here. We took the first two sets off of them only to turn around and lose the next two. Then it all came down to the fifth game. We had everything on our side—the talent, the heart. We kept the crowd on the edge of their seats for that two hour match, as we played the fifth game all the way to 19-17. It was such a big win for us as a team. I think we all wished we could have taken them down in three sets but what was important is that even though the match was as close as it was, we dug deep and sustained longer than our opponents to win the match.

After the match, I think we were all on a three-day weekend high from the big win! It was pacing break so the girls all dispersed with their family and friends to enjoy the beautiful fall weekend we were blessed with for that break. I went with my mom and sister to New York for a fun weekend in the city as I believe Jess, Chelsea and Emma did as well. B and Moose decided to road trip to Boston while some of the girls went home or just hung out on campus. On Monday we all reconvened for practice that night and turned around and practiced Tuesday morning as well. After practice, however, we took a team trip to Strawberry Fields pumpkin patch and apple orchard. We had fun picking pumpkins and then took them back to Coach Ref’s house to carve. It was a fun day of bonding and carving! We had some interesting pumpkin carvings—You’ll have to check out the pictures!

The next big weekend of matches came with our trip on the road to Army and Holy Cross. Our loss against Army was frustrating but in our second set of the match we had a lot of really great moments that, reflecting back on, we knew we had to demonstrate in every set of our match against Holy Cross the next day. And our plan worked! We beat Holy Cross in three sets. It was a great win for us and the team collectively played some great volleyball that day!

It had been another intense week of practice following our weekend on the road. We prepared for our matches against Colgate and Bucknell with a mid-week match against Le Salle. We dominated them in three sets and felt really great about our play coming into this weekend. Friday night was our Dig Pink match and we had specially made warm-ups donated to us by an alumnus, Mr. Kaufman that said Lehigh Volleyball with a big pink ribbon on it. Through out the match we had a pink volleyball going around to raise money for our Adopt-A-Family that athletics does at Christmas time. We are trying to collectively raise $30,000 this year for Bethlehem families but the volleyball team is trying to raise the most money out of all the teams! So if you have any interest in donating money, which is all tax-deductible, contact me or any of the players! We’d love the help…it is such a great cause that our team is deeply dedicated to.

Ok, now that my philanthropic pitch is over, back to the volleyball! Our match against Colgate didn’t really go as planned. It was a hard loss because as a team we didn’t feel like we left it all on the floor. We knew we could have played better, or given a little more, or been more effective. And as any athlete knows, that is a hard way to lose.

We decided we would take how ticked off we were with that match into our next match against Bucknell. We ended up losing 3-1 to the Bison, but we played our hearts out. We really fought to beat them but, because of a few key things, ended up losing to them in sets that, point and energy wise, were very close. Good thing we get to see Colgate and Bucknell again because I can promise you we plan on taking them down!

This coming week will be full of hard work and intense preparation to beat Lafayette again at their house on Halloween! I promise to keep you posted with how the match goes.