by Kent Cherrington
PSU Women's tennis team (top) and team member Rachel Xavier. PSU Women's volleyball team with Coach Moira Long at far left, and team members Becky Ciulla (number 25) and Kelly Landry ( number 14)
Plymouth State has had strong athletic teams, particularly in the fall, for decades. The football program dominated New England in the 1980s and ’90s, and the field hockey and men’s and women’s soccer teams have enjoyed regional and national success as far back as the 1970s.
Two Panther teams not normally in the spotlight took over the headlines in the fall of 2004. The Plymouth State women’s tennis and women’s volleyball programs achieved the primary goal of most PSU teams—capturing the Little East Conference Championship.
The twin championships for PSU were special not only because it was the first for either program, but because neither one was expected. The tennis team had finished fourth the year before and had lost two matches during the regular season, and the volleyball squad had graduated three All-Stars from the previous year’s runner-up team.
The road to the championship for the tennis team actually began in the spring of 2004, when Barbara Rawlsky-Willett took over as head coach after one year as an assistant.
“I remember last spring saying that winning the conference was our goal,” recalls Rawlsky-Willett. “It was a general comment, but I don’t think they thought much about it. I said it again in the fall, and they looked at me like I was nuts. They were young and hadn’t had much success, plus there were freshmen in the mix. Nobody knew what was going to happen.”
With a new coach and a new starting singles lineup that included two returnees and four newcomers, PSU faced one of the toughest teams in New England, Wheaton College, in the opening match. Wheaton took the match, 6-3, but the Panthers were encouraged.
“We had lost to them the previous season, 9-0, and we held up against them,” said Rawlsky-Willett. “That’s when I think they started believing in themselves a little more.”
PSU went through the regular season with a 6-4 record, gaining momentum in the last two matches with strong victories over Castleton State, 9-0, and Western Connecticut, 7-2.
“The Castleton coach praised our team and how well he thought we played,” says Rawlsky-Willett. “He told us he thought we should win the whole (LEC) thing. I think that kind of got in the back of our players’ minds.”
The Panthers carried the momentum into the LEC Tournament, and were in second place after the first day of the two-day event.
“Our confidence was up, and they just had a really good tournament,” the coach continues. “After all of our doubles teams advanced to the finals in their brackets, we crowded around the scoresheet, and we realized we were only a few points behind—and doubles isn’t even our strength. We figured it out. We knew if we did well in singles …”
The team did everything right the next day. They were up early, they warmed up well, they were prepared—something Rawlsky-Willett admits didn’t always happen during the season.
PSU was facing defending champion and tournament-leading Rhode Island College in several pivotal matches in the championship round. In the end, three Panthers brought home three individual singles champions and one doubles champion, and edged RIC by one-half point to claim their first title in the 11 years of the event.
The starting lineup for PSU included Whitney O’Leary, Erica Huckins, Jill Deyermond, Rachel Xavier, Liz Duell and Ashley Gorman. Huckins, Xavier and Gorman won singles championships, and Xavier and Deyermond captured a doubles title.
“Everyone played well, and everyone chipped in,” says Rawlsky-Willett. “Even those who didn’t win played well. Some only won once, but they got that half point that made the difference. We knew what we had to do, and we did it. They were a bunch of determined young ladies. It didn’t totally sink in until we got back to Plymouth, and someone said ‘We really won the whole thing!’ and we were all like, ‘Yeah, we really did.’”
The PSU volleyball team had the best season of its eight-year history in 2003, finishing with a 29-8 record and advancing to the second round of the ECAC New England Tournament. But six seniors graduated from that team, including three Little East Conference All-Stars.
“Having lost as much as we did,” said PSU coach Moira Long, “nobody expected us to have any great amount of success, or to win a championship! In the spring they thought we might be okay, but the fall kind of got off to a rocky start, with all the new people.”
Despite the graduation losses, PSU had a strong nucleus of returnees, led by three juniors who would go on to earn All-Conference honors: Kelly Landry, Becky Ciulla and Amanda Bagwell. The Panthers started the season with a 7-0 record, and finished September 13-5, but it wasn’t until the Bates College Tournament in early October that Long says the team blossomed.
“We played really well against Colby, which is one of the top teams in New England,” said Long, “and we beat Bates for the first time ever. That’s when it really hit them that we could be pretty good.”
PSU went into a late October LEC Round-Robin at Rhode Island College with a chance to clinch the regular-season title and home-court advantage in the conference tournament.
“We played horribly,” said Long. “We couldn’t get it going. That was probably our wake-up call. Here it is, a chance to win the regular-season title, and we didn’t do it.”
The regular season ended with a four-way tie for the LEC regular season championship between Plymouth State, RIC, Western Connecticut and Eastern Connecticut. PSU knocked Keene State out in the first round, and then upset five-time defending champion Western Connecticut in the semifinals.
“They [Western Conn.] had been our nemesis,” said Long. “We would continually lose to them. They always won when it counted, and they always got what we wanted. I had to find a way to do something different. So I didn’t talk about them. I just focused on us, and what we needed to do. Then to actually beat them, for the first time, it was just fantastic! There wasn’t just one person who had done it—it was a total team effort.”
While the Panthers had overcome a major obstacle, it was still only the semifinals. PSU had to come back the next day to face Eastern Connecticut in the championship match.
“It was the hardest thing to change gears,” said Long, “but we knew we had business to take care of, and we did. We beat Eastern three straight. It was an awesome accomplishment, an achievement that everyone can be proud of.”
Like their counterparts in tennis, Long said the volleyball team didn’t fully appreciate the championship at the time.
“It didn’t really sink in until a couple of weeks later,” said Long, “and it was like, “Wow! We won our conference. Who’d a thought!”
