In My Own Words: Final Four Setting Up for the Excitement and Looking for Closure

By Fernanda Bartels, Staff Writer

We concluded our regular season schedule with a victory against our rival, the James Madison Dukes. We finished the regular season with a 21-8 record and qualified for the CAA Tournament as the third seed.

Today, we look to prolong our season as we face the second-ranked Delaware Blue Hens at Virginia Commonwealth University. The winner in our match and the winner in the matchup between the top-seeded VCU Rams and the William & Mary Tribe will face off in the conference championship tomorrow.

With our season reaching its end, we have been reflecting about our team and where we stand in the conference playoffs. I am proud to say that we are not the same team as we were in August; we are more confident and mindful of the game.
These strengths were built with a lot of sweat, hours in the gym and time on the court.

I am also proud to say that we have been playing our finest volleyball since I came to George Mason University. During the spring and all throughout the season, we had one goal in mind. Our goal was to make it to the tournament. This year, the postseason structure changed with only four teams qualifying for the tournament, whereas six teams played in the tournament the past few years.

With that in mind, we knew we had to step up our game and work harder. So we did. By concluding the regular schedule, we ended the first part of our journey.
We reached our first goal, but it is not over. It does not feel good enough yet.

Now, we have a bigger challenge to face – Delaware. The four teams, which include us, Delaware, VCU and William & Mary, enter the playoffs on a similar level.
There is no favored team to win since all of the teams lost to each other during the regular season. It is hard to guess who is going to win the CAAs at this point.

It is hard to guess who will be the winner, but it is easy to know our chances.
We only have control over what happens on our side of the court, and if we “do our jobs,” like Head Coach Pat Kendrick usually says, we will definitely be competitive during the playoffs.

Being competitive might not be enough to win the tournament, but it is the feeling of trying our best that is going to last. There are no regrets. Everything needs to be left out on court. By the end, the results might not ever matter as much. All that matters now is knowing that we did everything we could to win.