It is not often that you see a team in any sport with only one regular season loss on their record. It is even rarer to see a new coach patrolling that team’s sidelines.

This season, the varsity girls volleyball team underwent a change in leadership when Shayna Orent was hired as the new coach. Although many of her players have played more years of high school volleyball than she has coached it, she led the team to a 14-1 record.

According to senior Hannah Williams, a lot of the success of the team can be attributed to Orent’s dedication.

“She is really dedicated to the job and she really pushes us harder,” Williams said.

Although she is new as a varsity coach, Orent has a seasoned background in the sport. She coached junior varsity volleyball last year and also coaches for SMASH, a local club volleyball program. She was a volleyball player at Andover High School and continued playing recreationally throughout college and her adult life.

Orent said the transition from coaching JV last year, her only year of high school coaching experience, to coaching varsity this year has not been too difficult.

“This is a level that I’m comfortable with,” Orent said. “I think it was more difficult to transition from being an assistant to running a program. Although it’s a little more difficult to organize everything and be on top of everything, it’s easier to coach more advanced teams.”

Orent attributes most of the team’s success to the athletes.

“A lot of our success has to do with the players that played club this past year and have just gotten so much better,” Orent said. “We didn’t graduate that many seniors last year, so we had most of our returning starting lineup. The girls are really dedicated to this. The two captains have been great and they work hard, they’re a really good group, and there’s been no issues or drama or anything like that.”

Senior and co-captain Brooke Gibbons agreed that a huge part of the team’s success was the hard work and dedication of the players as well as their camaraderie and experience.

“I think we all worked really hard in the offseason, and we are working really well as a team in practice, and I think that is benefitting us,” Gibbons said.

Although the season ended with a close loss in the sectional quarterfinals against Newton North, Gibbons said that the team still had a great season.

“We overcame a lot and fought really hard, and I’m okay with the way it ended,” Gibbons said. “It wasn’t ideal, but I thought as a team we did really well and I’m really happy with it.”

Edmund Geschickter can be contacted at [email protected].