After a grueling post-season loss, four athletes on Sonoma State’s women’s volleyball team were named as all-league team members and the program took home the last league defensive player of the week award.
One of the team’s top-performing athletes, senior setter Jen Trephan, was awarded a spot on the All-California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) First Team for the second time in two
seasons. “It feels great to get an award like this… Our team works super hard every day at practice…and we are so close [with one another] that we just have fun and don’t make winning the main priority,” Trephan said in recapping the2023 season.
Senior outside hitter Jaden Krist and senior Kiana Richardson also had decorated careers at SSU, being named All-CCAA Second Team. The team’s triumphs kept stacking up as senior middle Leilani Hallman won CCAA Defensive Player of the Week with 107.0 blocks on the season, and was also named All-CCAA Honorable Mention.
“Over the course of the year we grew a lot mentally,” junior setter Brynna Slayton said regarding how the team was able to improve throughout the season, “as a collegiate athlete having to show up every day and compete can be really draining, but as a team we learned how to push through and finish.”
After ending the regular season in fifth place in their respective division, the Seawolves matched up against Cal Poly Pamona in the quarterfinals of the CCAA Championship Tournament on Nov. 17th in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the Broncos came out on top, beating the Seawolves 3-0. Despite the loss, the team still was able to get to the playoffs while remaining one of the most competitive teams in the state all season long while facing off against California State Los Angeles along with California State San Bernardino to name a few.
Speaking on what the atmosphere of the playoff game against Cal Poly Pamona was like, senior and defensive specialist Riley Beyma said, “The atmosphere in the last tournament game was very fair because we weren’t at our home court and Pamona wasn’t at theirs. There weren’t really fans that could make or break us [as] there was an equal amount of parents from Pamona and also parents supporting our team.”
While coming up just short of winning the conference championship wasn’t their ideal outcome, the team put up a very respectable effort in the 2023 campaign and finished with an overall record of 17-9 while going 12-6 in conference play as well as garnering a playoff birth for the second consecutive year in a row.
