When parents come to visit for Fairfield’s parents weekend, one activity will be missing: a varsity athletic event. If your family members are in dire need of a sporting event however, there is one possible alternative: watching the women’s club volleyball’s inaugural match.

The new Fairfield club team will have its first official match against the University of Massachusetts this Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

While the team does not have any official coaches, being run by the club officers, Director of Intramurals Paul Cantrell is currently acting as the teams advisor.

Cantrell’s main job has been to help out with the paper work and other administrative duties in order to assist the team in getting up and running. Other than that, the team is run solely by the officers and players.

Amy Sulzman ’07 is the club’s president. Currently she has four officers helping her with team operations. Heather Morassini ’05 is the vice president, Alex Dziuma ’07 and Jackie Acampora ’06 are acting secretaries and Genine Siciliano ’07 is the court captain. These five are considered the clubs main officers.

Currently, the team is a member of the Northwest Volleyball Club League. This league is composed of a total of 21 teams. Some teams that are competing in the same league as Fairfield are UConn, Syracuse and Penn State.

While there was a similar club volleyball team last year, it was simple considered a “group” rather than an club.

While the “group” couldn’t consider themselves an official club, they met and practiced twice a week. The team spent most of their time mainly scrimmaging the men’s club team and they didn’t play any other schools.

“We’re really trying to get this team going,” said Sulzman.

The team has a very strong showing of girls who are determined to play hard and win some games at the same time. The team consists of fifteen girls from all different classes.

“I think that volleyball is a very popular sport and many girls would love to play, but don’t feel they’re capable of participating at the varsity level,” said Sulzman.

This being the first year for the club, the team doesn’t have a great amount of experience against other schools in their new league.

“This is sure to be a building year,” said Sulzman. “We’re really just trying to get out there, have some fun, and maybe win a few games on the way.”

The league will hold nine tournaments this year between October and April. Fairfield will register in three or four of those tournaments.

Sulzman said that the first tournament of the year will likely be November 6 at Boston University.

The team has been practicing very hard to make this year a success.

“We have a good defensive team and some decent hitters, but we just need to work on gelling as a team and really coming together,” said Sulzman.

Cantrell believes the club will be a success and an asset to the volleyball program at Fairfield.

“Amy went out and found other women who loved the sport of volleyball enough to invest their time, energy and dedication, they are going to be an excellent administrative core and I expect the club to be around a very long time,” said Cantrell.

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