Blazers Embrace Underdog Role As Marquee Matches Loom

Written by Nick Heidelberger

Gabriel Levy sat with a calm confidence as he reflected on the opportunity in front of him and his teammates. The type of confidence born when an athlete knows his group has done everything possible to prepare for the moment. Every rep in practice and every set in the weight room has been attacked with the same intensity and determination. Four years of meetings with Coach Gisbrecht and off-the-court team bonding, all geared towards building a winning program. Building a championship program.

When there's nothing more you can do, you put all your chips on the table. That's just what the Elms men's volleyball team will do as it enters a three-week stretch that might define the four-year careers of six seniors.

When Levy left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to study and play at Elms back in 2014, he knew it wouldn't be easy. In fact, that was the appeal. Teammate and countryman Daniel Bondarovsky helped sell Gabe on the vision that they could help build something special in Chicopee. But only if they were willing to work.

"Daniel told me that the team is good, it has potential, but we've got to work hard," Gabe recalled. "I didn't want to go to a team where we would be winning every single match and we didn't have to work for anything. I'd rather go somewhere where I'm going start from the bottom but we're going to build something. Even if we don't win the conference or do something great, hopefully we can leave something for the years ahead where they can go even further."

The early years were bleak. In the spring of 2015 the Blazers posted a 5-20 overall record, managed just a 2-10 mark in New England Collegiate Conference play and missed the conference tournament. The Blazers were a far cry from conference king Endicott, which swept through NECC play and captured its third consecutive league title. Elms improved in 2016 but still found itself on the wrong side of .500, going 12-15 overall and 4-6 in the NECC. Once again, Endicott took home the conference crown.

The Blazers turned a corner in 2017, compiling an 18-10 record while going 8-4 in the NECC. Elms avenged two regular-season losses to Regis (Mass.) with a win over the Pride in the conference semifinals, catapulting the Blazers to their first NECC title match since 2013. Of course, Endicott awaited the Blazers in the NECC championship game, and for the fifth consecutive year, the Gulls captured the championship.

While Elms fell short of an NECC title and NCAA Tournament berth in 2017, the Blazers could see their hard work beginning to pay off. A win against a perennial contender and trip to the conference finals tends to build confidence, and the improvement in the gym was noticeable.

"It was a progression, slowly, year-by-year," Gabe said, recalling the team's improvement since that 5-20 season. "We had to be patient. Some of the drills we do today, we couldn't even try to do my freshman year. When it came to individual skills, those wouldn't allow us to do certain drills or certain things during our warm-ups."

After three-plus years of slow and steady improvement, the Blazers now find themselves with a golden opportunity to gauge just how far they've come. In a five-day span beginning on Thursday Elms hosts national No. 1 Springfield College and NECC rival Endicott.

Battling a national top-5 team will be nothing new for Elms. The Blazers have already faced the Nos. 3 and 4 teams in the country this season, falling 3-0 to No. 3 Stevens and 3-1 to No. 4 Kean in January. Elms, which has been knocking on the door of the program's first-ever national top-15 ranking all season, does have a win over a nationally ranked team this year - a road victory over No. 12 Vassar on Feb. 27.

A successful home-stand for Elms could define the turnaround the Blazers have been building brick-by-brick for four years. But instead of feeling the pressure that typically accompanies marquee matchups, Elms enters the vital stretch with the calm confidence that Gabe embodies.

"There's no pressure on us because if we don't win the conference championship, it's just another year of the same thing. We should play loose," 10^th-year Elms coach Sheila Gisbrecht explained. "Who doesn't like being the underdog? At the end of the day, if something doesn't go our way, it's what everybody expects. We're here to be David and shoot down Goliath. And if we can do it once, twice, maybe a few more times, then we can walk out of the season and say we did everything that we wanted to do. Those are the goals and they're going to be hard to reach because if they were easy, what fun would that be?"

While a win over the top Division III team in the country would undoubtedly be a milestone for the Blazers, knocking off Endicott would be more personal for Gabe, who along with the entire senior class, is a combined 0-9 against the Gulls, including a three-set road loss earlier this season.

"When it comes to Endicott the same concept applies because they've been winning every single game," Gabe said, referring to Elms playing the underdog role. "But it's more important because I feel that whenever Endicott plays somebody, they already have it in their mind that they're going to win. They still play hard, but I can tell they already know they're going to win," he said, making it clear with just a few extra words that he takes exception to that mindset.

Elms has compiled two 20-win seasons in the program's 15 years of existence, and the Blazers enter Thursday's showdown with Springfield at 13-4 on the season and 5-1 in NECC play. With seven regular-season contests before the NECC semifinals, the temptation to compare this year's team with the 20-game winners of 2009 and 2012, both of which were coached by Gisbrecht, is too great to resist.

"This group from top to bottom is the most skilled squad that we've had on our campus at one time," Gisbrecht said without hesitation. "I've always been a firm believer in chemistry and team-over-me. Having those moments of 'what can I do to serve my team so that we can take the next step?' If we totally buy into that 100 percent, there is nothing that this team will not be able to accomplish."

With arguably the most important matches of the season still to be played, this team's legacy is still unwritten. For Gabe, it all comes back to the vision that first brought him to Elms.

"I just hope that they can remember the amount of work that we put in to build the program to where it is right now."