After four years of blood, sweat, tears and two trips to the NCAA Tournament, Rachel Romansky ‘14 felt “like I ran into a wall” when their tournament game against eighth-ranked Nebraska ended with a 3-0 loss.
“I just started crying … I wasn’t crying because we lost, I wasn’t crying because we did badly; it was just like that was it, I was never going to see the court again,” said Romansky, who finished her collegiate career with a 22-assist effort in the loss, bringing her total for her four years at Fairfield to 4,552 assists, good for second all-time in school history. “It was just so shocking, so overwhelming.”
Romansky also finishes ninth in school history in career digs with 1,132, and sixth in school history with 452 sets played. She became just the second player in program history to finish her career with over 4,000 assists and 1,000 digs, joining Liz Bower ’99.
For Haley Moyer ‘14, she said the feeling did not hit her until the locker room.
“The coaches came in and started talking about how it was a great season, and that we’re going to miss the seniors, and then the tears started rolling down,” said Moyer.
Moyer finishes seventh in Fairfield history with a .284 hitting percentage, and earned multiple MAAC Academic Honor Roll spots.
Senior Carsen Mata, who joined the Fairfield program after one year at North Carolina State, called her experience in the NCAA Tournament this season “exciting and exhilarating.”
“It was incredible. All I can say is that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m so proud of our team,” said Mata after the match on Friday.
The seniors Romansky, Moyer and Mata leave behind quite the legacy for Fairfield volleyball. The duo of Romansky and Moyer were part of a Fairfield team that lost 20 matches their freshman season in 2010. Since then, the team has gone 61-32, has won back-to-back MAAC regular season championships and earned two straight NCAA Tournament berths.
Despite their own personal accomplishments, both Moyer and Romansky pointed to team efforts and accomplishments as their biggest sources of pride.
“I think my proudest moment was just making sure we won that first MAAC Championship, because we had all that pressure and the stigma of not winning for eleven years,” said Moyer. “I think winning that first one was my proudest moment as a Stag, and winning a second one was just a cherry on top, for senior year.
But seeing this team grow, and now that it’s a standard that we should win and go to the NCAA Tournament, is an amazing way to leave.”
Romansky agreed, and points to how much she and Haley have dealt with over their four years as sources of her personal pride.
“I think for me it was just how much Haley and I have grown and built this program,” said Romansky. “We started at the bottom and made our way up. That was our biggest accomplishment. Starting from having seniors that didn’t really like us, it was really hard in the beginning, and we had to figure it out, it was rough.”
Both Romansky and Moyer laughed when they brought up a prediction made by Moyer early in their freshman year.
“Haley said freshman year, ‘So, you’re going to get the athlete awards, and I’m going to get the scholar awards,’” said Romansky laughing, “… and I think, at the end, we both had our fair share. Both of us did really well, and we both got individually recognized, and we’re really proud of that too.”
Both lived up to those predictions almost creepily accurately. Romansky has gone on to win MAAC Setter of the Year each of the past three seasons, something that had never been done before in MAAC history, while Moyer has made every academic team imaginable and is using her talents in the classroom to go to law school next fall.
While the two did not agree on which of their MAAC Titles meant more to them (Moyer believes last year was more magical as a curse-ending year, while Romansky liked how this year’s team proved doubters wrong by winning it all again), both can agree that there is one thing that can define their four years at Fairfield: winning.
“Winning twice, both junior and senior year, that makes it even better,” said Romansky.
Leave a Reply