South Hadley girls volleyball program connects three generations

Left to right, top to bottom: Betsy Riley, Chloe Bardwell, Sabrina Bardwell, Josie Bardwell and Riley Bardwell represent three generations in the Tigers volleyball program.

Left to right, top to bottom: Betsy Riley, Chloe Bardwell, Sabrina Bardwell, Josie Bardwell and Riley Bardwell represent three generations in the Tigers volleyball program. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

By CONNOR PIGNATELLO

Staff Writer

Published: 10-08-2024 5:26 PM

SOUTH HADLEY — Sabrina Bardwell was dead set on field hockey.

It was the beginning of the school year in the early 1990s, and the seventh grader was choosing her fall sport. But her mother, Betsy Riley, had just started a one-week volleyball program at Amherst and needed people to join. Sabrina signed up, and she couldn’t get enough.

“At the end of the week, she said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to play field hockey,’” Betsy said. ‘I want to play volleyball.’”

Three decades, a western Mass. title, a state championship game appearance and a Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year award later, the former Amherst star is now in her second season rebuilding the South Hadley volleyball program. Sabrina serves as the varsity coach, her mom serves as the JV coach, and Sabrina’s freshman twin daughters, Riley and Chloe, are playing their first year on the JV team. Her youngest, Josie, is the team mascot.

“I asked (Betsy) and she was really excited at the opportunity to coach with me now,” Sabrina said of taking the job last year. “And knowing that Riley and Chloe were only a year out was really exciting for the family.”

“Now they’ve got all of us.”

In 2022, the Tigers finished 0-18 and won just one set all year. In 2023, Sabrina’s first year in charge, they went 12-8. This year, they’re 9-2 and on a three-game winning streak after a win over Hampden Charter Thursday night.

Sabrina was approached multiple times to get back into coaching while her daughters were young. Balancing her work schedule proved to be too difficult at first, but she knew that she eventually wanted to get back into the sport. When the Tigers JV job opened a few years ago, she took it.

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“I was kind of like, ‘Well, if I don’t start now, when they’re in high school I might not get the chance to coach them like my mom coached me,’” she said.

After former South Hadley coach Corey Koske retired, Sabrina stepped into the varsity role, but that left an opening on the JV team. Finding a replacement proved difficult – that is, until she looked inside her own family.

“I was like ‘Well, my mom’s retired, and she’s a great coach,’” she said. “But I was like ‘I don’t know if she’ll want to coach under me.’”

Betsy coached for 23 years at Amherst, and not just volleyball. She worked as a physical education teacher and coached everything from track and field to swimming and diving.

She was thrilled to take the opportunity.

“I absolutely love working with the girls,” Betsy said. “Watching them grow and develop as players and watching the success they have, the enthusiasm when they win a point or make a kill against their opponent, the way they just scream in excitement and celebrate, it’s really rewarding.”

Sabrina and Betsy talk on the phone five times a day in addition to the two hours of practice they spend with each other. Sabrina sits on the bench with Betsy during JV games and Betsy sits on the bench with Sabrina during varsity games. They talk strategy on the bus rides to games and adjustments on the way back.

They can express themselves with each other like no other pair of coaches can.

“It’s funny because when you get frustrated with someone,” Sabrina said. “And it’s let’s just say a random person you just started coaching with, you can get frustrated, but you don’t usually express the frustrations as easily as with your mom.”

Both say they compliment each other’s styles – Sabrina taps on her own volleyball experience with the varsity squad and Betsy focuses on skill development with the JV team. Without a middle school team or a recreation department team, South Hadley needs Betsy’s experience to train JV players for varsity, Sabrina said.

“Her focus on development is really going to help the volleyball culture in South Hadley and provide us with more opportunities to be successful and win,” Sabrina said. “And the more you win, the more people want to play.”

Though the twins have been coached by Sabrina “all our lives,” Chloe said, this is their first time getting instruction from Betsy. She’s gotten good reviews so far.

Riley said she’s been impressed by how well Betsy has worked with groups.

“I really like her coaching style,” Riley said. “It’s very thorough and she helps everyone individually instead of just talking and everyone doing their own thing.”

And just like how Sabrina and Betsy used to talk volleyball on rides home and at the dinner table, Sabrina and her daughters, Riley and Chloe, share the same conversations. They’ll watch film of their own team and college volleyball games on TV.

“(Riley) will sit down with me and she’ll be like, ‘S;o, I thought so-and-so did really well at practice today’ and ‘what do you think about this?’” Sabrina said. “And it’s kind of like I see a coach developing in her, because she’s excited to talk about and digest everything that happened that day or that game.”

At home after practice, advice for the twins isn’t far away.

“Something we say all the time is volleyball is a game of mistakes, and the team that wins is the team that bounces back and makes the least amount of mistakes,” Sabrina said. “So don’t get down on yourself when you make a mistake, it’s how you come back from that mistake and play after.”

Between Sabrina and Betsy, Riley and Chloe have a wealth of advice at their disposal, and the twins said they like hearing advice from two different perspectives. Sometimes it’s easier to think through the advice in one way or the other.

“Especially since (Sabrina) coaches varsity, she doesn’t coach us as much as my grandma does,” Riley said. “So it’s good to hear from both sides.”

Chloe said she’s been working on reaching high for the ball and snapping her wrist when she’s hitting and keeping her eye on the ball and watching her hand hit right behind it when she’s serving. Riley said she’s been working on her serving toss and making sure her elbow is high.

The first year of the four working together has been a success so far. And for a South Hadley team with just three upperclassmen and a strong group of young players, this is just the beginning.

“We work very well together,” Chloe said. “We’re all competitive and really want to win.”