Buffaloes Close 2019 Season At Annual Banquet

BOULDER – The University of Colorado women's volleyball program gathered Sunday morning in the Arrow Touchdown Club to celebrate the 2019 season and honor three departing seniors.

The annual banquet was a gathering of the masses with the team, support staff, administration, parents, families and key donors coming together to pay tribute to the hard work of the 2019 season.

Festivities began with Senior Women Administrator Ceal Barry presenting Head Coach Jesse Mahoney with a commemorative volleyball for his first top-10 national victory that came against No.5-ranked Illinois in the Pac-12 vs. BIG TEN Challenge. Coach then addressed everyone on the hard work that went on in the season. He expressed his gratitude towards the team for progressing throughout the season and noted that the team persevered through the first half of conference play and finished with five wins in the second half of play.

The most anticipated awards came in the middle of the banquet with the team's most valuable player honors. Sophomore setter Jenna Ewert was named the Offensive Most Valuable Player, while Rachel Whipple capped her career being named the Defensive MVP. The Scout Team MVP went to redshirt junior Leah Clayton, while the prestigious Heart of a Buff honor went to sophomore Taylor deProsse.

Offensive MVP (Jenna Ewert)
"As a freshman, she started the second half of the season leading us in a five one," said Mahoney. "I really think she was even better this year. As a freshman, we kind of dictated to her and told her everything that she was going to do every play. She didn't like that a whole lot, sometimes. But as she as she grew and became a better player and got a little bit more experience under her belt she really ran the offense on her own. This year was really special to see."

Ewert led the team with 1,010 assists. She also had 92 kills, 272 digs and 56 blocks. She was named an All-Pac-12 honorable mention.

Defensive MVP (Rachel Whipple)
"We talk about getting better every day and every practice and I think Rachel really lived that mindset," said Mahoney. "Her improvement throughout her career, and her improvement from the first half of this year the second half of this year was really special. Minus the Stanford libero, Rachel was the best libero in the second half of the Pac-12."

Whipple led the team with 417 total digs and was fifth in the conference in digs per set in the overall season. She made a huge stride in conference, finishing with 4.40 digs per set, good for second.

Scout Team MVP (Leah Clayton)
"Something a lot of people outside of the program don't see or realize and appreciate is the work that our scout team does in preparing our starters for what they're going to see each week," said Mahoney. "And so, we would like to recognize a player from that team every year. This year our scout team MVP is Leah Clayton."

"Leah can absolutely crush the ball. As a scout team member, she can play left side, she can play right side. We tell her this is the ball we want you to hit and we want you to hit it over and over and over. That's what she did for us this season and we can't wait until she's doing that on our side of the net."

Heart of the Buffalo (Taylor deProsse)
"The last award that we have is called the Heart of the Buff," said Mahoney. "This is something that the coaches meeting and talk about a little bit. This award goes to the player that our staff feels should be recognized for living the ideals we set forth in our program, and the core values that we set forth in our program. Our team got together this summer and kind of did a workshop amongst themselves to create our core values. Our core values are passion, integrity, discipline and leadership. This player I think exemplifies all of those at a really high level and that's Taylor deProsse."

award winners — Award Winners (Left to right): Leah Clayton, Taylor deProsse, Rachel Whipple and Jenna Ewert.

The first awards honored during the event was the Pac-12 All-Academic honorees that included Brynna DeLuzio, Emily DeMure, deProsse, Lillie Klemmer, Danielle Price and Whipple. The Buffs recorded the highest fall GPA for the team in the past 19 years.
The team showed honor to the Pac-12 Players of the Week honors that were given following the Pac-12 vs. BIG TEN Challenge when Meegan Hart was named the Defensive Player of the Week and Jill Schneggenburger was named Freshman of the Week in the same honor.

Other awards honored were the All-Pac-12 team honorees; Justine Spann, Jenna Ewert and All-Freshman selection Sterling Parker. Parker was also named to the Volleyballmag.com Freshman All-America Honorable Mention for her stellar season at right side.

The final portion of the program was the speeches for the seniors as well as the senior speeches. Colorado paid tribute to seniors Justine Spann, Lillie Klemmer and Rachel Whipple.

Seniors Rachel Whipple, Justine Spann and Lillie Klemmer

Colorado concluded the season with a 13-17 overall record and a 5-15 mark in Pac-12 play. The team returns 15 individuals and have added one freshman via letter of intent. The team will have two redshirt seniors next season, three redshirt juniors to go along with three juniors, six sophomores, one redshirt freshman and a true freshman. 2020 will mark the first time since Mahoney's first season that there have been as many or more upperclassmen as there are underclassmen.

Players Mentioned

Leah Clayton

Brynna DeLuzio

Emily DeMure

Taylor deProsse

Jenna Ewert

Meegan Hart

Lillie Klemmer

Sterling Parker

Danielle Price

Jill Schneggenburger

Justine Spann

Rachel Whipple

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