'Tex' message
Franklin Pierce volleyball player brings intense effort, game to court
KEN MURPHY
Sentinel Staff
RINDGE - The girl they call "Tex" had a team-high 15 kills in
Franklin Pierce's four-set loss to Bentley on Tuesday night in a
Northeast-10 Conference volleyball tussle at the Fieldhouse.
Two of them came in a down-to-the-wire first set, when Caitlynn
Parnell, the latest NE-10 player of the week, slammed home two
winners to give her Ravens leads of 30-29 and 31-30.
Parnell, of Medina, Texas, about an hour north of San Antonio,
eventually served to give Franklin Pierce a 34-32 victory.
Bentley, the conference preseason favorites, stormed back for a
four-set victory, snapping Franklin Pierce's three-game winning
streak with a 3-1 (32-34, 30-20, 30-20, 30-26) win.
When the teams changed sides after Game 1, Franklin Pierce junior
Emily Schultz called out her 5-foot-11 teammate, giving her props
for her hand in the win.
"Tex, yeah," Schultz said, giving Parnell a chest bump and a double
high-five.
"In comparison to last year, she's stepped it up physically and
mentally," Schultz, a junior, said of Parnell's development. "She
wants to win. And Tex can put the ball down."
Parnell, an outside hitter, continued her standout season in
Tuesday's loss. With 15 kills and 16 digs, she recorded her second
straight double-double - the other coming in Saturday's win over
Saint Anselm.
Parnell was presented with her first career NE-10 player of the
week award Monday after twice setting a career high with 19 kills
in her team's 3-0 week to go with a .380 hitting percentage and an
average of 2.60 digs per game.
Parnell said teammate Karissa Hookstadt told her about the NE-10
award over lunch. After the game, Parnell had yet to tell her
mother, Sissy Ten Eyck, about the honor.
"I'm going to call her later," said Parnell, as she sat on a
trainer's table icing two shin splints, a normal postgame
routine.
At 100-student Medina High, where Parnell starred in basketball and
volleyball, and was a three-time all-district volleyball player
despite not playing until her sophomore year.
Because Parnell's high school was so small, Franklin Pierce didn't
really know the kind of player it had recruited until Parnell
showed her potential her rookie season, finishing with a team-high
321 kills and second on the team with 317 digs.
"This year, she's seeing the game a lot better and playing
consistently across the board from the outside," Coach Sharon
Bonaventure said "She's also directing traffic and involving her
teammates more, which she didn't do last year."
Teammates say they feed off Parnell's intensity, which was on full
display against the Falcons. With her Ravens trailing 20-14 in Game
2, Parnell exhorted her teammates to step up their play.
"When she gets a kill, she brings everyone up with her," said
junior middle hitter Nicole Buchholz, who had 13 kills for the
Ravens to tie redshirt freshman Michelle Koike for second on the
team."
Bonaventure said Parnell also tends to play her best against better
teams.
"Against the quality opponents you see her bring a different level
of intensity and really step it up, which is great because her team
feeds off that," said Bonaventure, who won her 200th career game
with the Ravens' victory over Saint Anselm on Saturday.
Twenty-two of the 200 have come with "Tex" manning the left side of
the net, on the hunt for her latest kill and the rush that comes
with putting an opponent away.
"It's a weird high you get," Parnell said of the adrenaline rush
that comes with a victory. Including the team's three-game win
streak, Franklin Pierce is 4-7 on the young season and 1-1 in the
NE-10.
"We clicked and we got into a system and rode the wave," Parnell
said about the win streak. "It was amazing."
Parnell and her teammates will have a chance to recapture that
feeling when the Ravens close out a five-game homestand Thursday
against UMass-Lowell.