When watching sports you usually don’t know the players, you may know their names and how old they are but you don’t really know them. Meadville girls volleyball is home to 5 seniors, Kendall Sandrock, Ella Stewart, Meghan Willis, Kailani Kawata, and Julia Mook. Let’s take an opportunity to get to know these players off the court.

Believe it or not, sports don’t define players, outside of a sport they may have hobbies and activities or play more than one sport. Julia Mook plays basketball and enjoys skiing, while Kai enjoys hanging out with family and friends, as well as playing tennis. Outside of their hobbies, they have goals they would like to accomplish this season. Goals are what make players want to succeed and win. Kendall Sandrock says, “I wanna win, I want to win games. One of my goals was achieved last night when we beat Maplewood because we lost to them last year…” Meghan wants to have no regrets on the season and have a ton of fun too. Ella’s goal is “just to get better and have some college coaches hopefully like me.”

These girls have made it through 3 years of being student-athletes at MASH and have made plenty of memories over their time here. Kendall’s favorite memory is, “The support we get from the volleyball community in Meadville, it’s very big, like with the boys, the boy’s team is very supportive of us which [kind of] correlates back to them, we are super supportive of them. I just like the bond we’ve created to make volleyball a big sport in Meadville.” Julia’s favorite memory is feeling excited throughout the whole school day, wearing your volleyball merch, and knowing people are coming to your game that night. 

In the 2017-2018 school year, now head coach, Tim Schleicher came to Meadville and found himself in the gym with his first group of 8th graders, who are now seniors. Schleicher says, “…It was [kind of] like we started together so it’s [kind of] neat to see them be here as seniors…” Competitiveness is one of the most important things to have when you play volleyball and Schleicher said they had it. “…I just remember them all being in the gym together as little 8th graders and they had a really good season and they were really competitive…” Schleicher says it’s pretty special to see them go from the group who is learning from the upperclassmen to the group that our underclassmen look up to and learn from. 

From being little 8th graders to seniors time flies by fast for this class. As these seniors start the beginning of the end of their volleyball careers as Bulldogs, they have great advice to give MASH underclassmen. Kai’s advice is to keep going with it. “ I’ve always gotten down on myself but just to keep going, keep playing, because if you’re not playing in college these are your only four years to play, make the most of it.” Ella’s advice is, “Honestly don’t focus on all the little things because it’s the big things that matter.” Make sure to come out and support these competitive, motivated, and passionate seniors as they make one last run for it!