Cheshire girls volleyball is looking to play for its third-straight Southern Connecticut Conference title this week, but the Rams have already celebrated a big milestone this season: 600 career wins for head coach Sue Bavone.
“Any of these milestones are program milestones, you know, it's not just a ‘Sue Bavone’ milestone,” Bavone said.
After 29 seasons at Cheshire, where she also coaches the boy’s team, Bavone would much rather talk about everyone else who did the winning along the way.
“There's always some class that gets to be in on the actual big number,” Bavone said. “But we always we never lose sight of the classes that came before that got to that big number.”
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Those “big numbers” have happened a lot in the Rams’ gym.
“I still remember the time we celebrated 550 and I was like, 'Wow, that's insane,'” senior Emma Danaher said. “She deserves so much recognition for what she's done.”
Recognition Bavone passes on to the consistency of her assistant coaches, but that her players are more than happy to share.
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“I've been saying all my friends are like, ‘oh like 600 wins. That's so many.’ And I'm always like because she knows what she's doing,” junior Eva Catalanotto said.
Of course, the road to 600 wins has come with some bumps. Just ask Bavone about her first ever game.
“I was so nervous. I locked the balls, the medkit, everything, I locked them and my keys in my car,” Bavone said.
One of her players got a broken nose in that game, too. But they won. Win number one on the road to 600.
“Everyone always asks, ‘Why didn't you coach college?’ and I like getting whatever I get and trying to figure out how to make it successful,” Bavone said.
That’s the challenge every year in a town like Cheshire that has strong girls sports programs for volleyball, the sport at the bottom of the alphabet, as Bavone says, to compete with.
Though, her program does plenty of competing of their own.
“Since 1994, every single girl that we've coached is on one of those banners,” Bavone said, pointing to the championship banners in the high school gym.
“Every kid's walked out of here with either a league championship or a conference championship or a state championship or all three ... so they've all experienced winning and they've all experienced losing luckily not as much," she continued.
The Rams will try for their 17th overall SCC title this week and then shift their attention to the state championships.
