Volleyball team will miss Judge

By Frank Visco
Collegian Editor
December 6, 2006

When it comes to sports, most people have certain expectations. People expect offensive linemen to be big and pitchers to throw hard. They expect running backs to showcase good moves and wingmen to skate well. They expect center fielders to be fast and shooting guards to nail baskets.

Carolyn Judge was at the center of the Explorers’ team for four years,
and she will be missed - Frank Visco

Along these lines, when it comes to women’s volleyball, the biggest expectation is that the players will be tall. However, while this is a commonly held belief, it isn’t always true. Just ask senior Carolyn Judge, the team’s libero and co-captain, who at five feet, eight inches is the shortest girl on the team.

“When I tell people I am a volleyball player they usually question my height, but I just explain that my position does not require me to be as tall as the other girls,” she said. “I’m considered to be short on my team, but I would say I’m taller that most other liberos.”

In providing the defense for a team, liberos need to be able to get and stay low to the ground in order to dig balls, Judge said. As a result, the taller a volleyball player is, the more difficult it is to be consistently successful at the position.

“I would not want to be any taller or shorter; my height worked out just right for me,” Judge said.

Statistics suggest Judge’s “just right” assessment is correct. During her tenure at La Salle, she has amassed 2,082 digs, the most in school history and seventh most in the history of NCAA Division I volleyball. She has also made the A-10 All-Conference Team the last two years running (Second Team in 2005 and Honorable Mention in 2006).

In addition, she has led the Atlantic 10 in digs during the past two seasons, becoming the only player in the league’s 23-year history to record 600 digs in a season (and she did it twice). Furthermore, her 671 digs in 2005 is the single-season A-10 record.

Judge said having these distinctions gives her an “incredible feeling.” Nevertheless, she maintains she never expected to get this far, and that she’s “just grateful for being able to play college volleyball.” Still, when pressed, Judge offers her rationale for why she’s been so successful.

“I’m pretty sure a lot of people are hard on themselves, but I’m really hard on myself,” she said. “I don’t know if that facilitates a high level of success necessarily, but I constantly am working to improve. To this day, I don’t think I’ve reached my highest potential; I feel I could’ve played better these past few years.”

Head coach Dave Stever echoes such sentiments. He has watched Judge mature as a volleyball player since coming to La Salle three years ago, and says that her most distinguishing aspect is her perfectionism.\

“I think she has a real passion for the game, and she is a perfectionist. She doesn’t cut herself any slack; she demands perfection,” he said. “Sometimes I think it’s to a fault, because I think she has a difficult time dealing with the few mistakes she does make. Still, she’s passionate and is a perfectionist, and she will accept nothing less.”

Despite thinking such perfectionism could be a fault for Judge, Stever does say that it is what allows her to achieve so much success, both individually and as a team leader.

“I think because she demands perfection from herself, she puts those demands on her teammates,” he said. “I think she communicates well with her teammates, and is able to communicate what she wants from them.”

Stever hasn’t been the only one to notice Judge’s great ability as a team leader. Junior Stephanie Owen, who will take on co-captain duties next season, also claims Judge excelled as a leader.

“Her abilities speak for themselves, [but] she also was a great player to have on the court even [when she wasn’t] touching the ball. She was a great on-court leader, constantly talking and giving words of encouragement and pushing everyone to work hard and to do their best.”

With all this in mind, it’s hard to imagine that Judge wasn’t locked up by La Salle early in the recruiting process. After picking up volleyball at the end of grade school, Judge succeeded at the outside hitter position in high school. Hailing from a sports-oriented family – her brother played Division III basketball, while her sister played Division I tennis – she thinks she was expected to play volleyball in college. However, unlike many of her teammates, Judge did not come on a recruit visit, and she didn’t officially decide on La Salle until the end of her senior year.

“The whole recruiting process was difficult for me, because I don’t think I was being recruited for the position that I wanted,” she said. “Even though I was an outside hitter, I knew that I was going to play defense, but college coaches weren’t looking at me that way. They probably thought I was too short to be a hitter on their team, and couldn’t play to their level, without understanding I wanted to play defense. As a result, I eventually settled on La Salle, which became a perfect match for me.”

In her freshman year, Judge made the move from outside hitter to libero. Despite her record-setting successes, she said it was initially a hard transition that she wasn’t quite ready for. However, as a result of hard work and dedication, she eventually improved, becoming a force in her later years. Sadly for the Explorers, they will lose that force to graduation this spring.

“It’ll be extremely tough to try and fill her spot. Not only did she become sound defensively, but the big job that a libero does is passing the ball off a serve-receive, and she does that extremely well,” Stever said. “I think there are two aspects of her game that are going to be difficult to replace.”

Stever believes that Judge will most likely be replaced from within, as the team has spent time and effort recruiting other positions – a middle hitter as well as a setter to replace the team’s other outgoing senior, Caitlin Conner. Still, the team doesn’t seem to be in a place to think about replacements just yet.

“I don’t think there’s one or two individuals on the team that can step up to their roles on the team, but I think that as a team we can learn from them,” Owen said. “However, if we each step up our game, including our communication and our attitudes and remember what both Carolyn and Caitlin have taught us, then I think that we can help each other the way that they helped us.”

Although the team will miss Judge, she believes that they are in good hands with next year’s captains (Owen and junior Erin Sullivan), as well as the coaching staff, which, in addition to Stever, includes assistant coaches Brian Sell and Kara Branz (both of whom she said helped her during her tenure at La Salle).

Despite this, the team still isn’t looking forward to losing her, as Owen and Stever both refer to her as the type of player any team would miss. However, it is important to note that the street goes two ways. While she said she might get involved with club volleyball or coaching in the future, in the here and now, Judge knows she will miss the team and the game of volleyball.

Notably, she will miss the Hayman Center, La Salle’s loyal fans and the team’s pre-game dance parties in the team room, during which the team rocked out to boy bands. She will also miss visiting different cities on road trips, and their excursions to bowling alleys during them. However, most of all, she will miss the individual players she battled with every game on the court.

“Everyone on the team loves each other,” Judge said. “It hasn’t fully hit me yet, but I know I’m going to miss it so much. I can’t imagine not playing volleyball with them. It’s going to be a big loss.”

viscof1@lasalle.edu