On Wednesday, January 4th, 2017 Junior Andrea O’Connor was named to the MaxPreps’ 2016 Underclass All-American Volleyball Team. The funny thing about it was that she herself never found out about this accolade until this past weekend, March 24th – approximately three months after it was announced! She said, “I didn’t even know about the whole thing until I was talking with one of my friends, who was also named to the team, and she asked me how I felt about that. After that I went online myself to see if this was really true. I was completely shocked and really thought that the whole award was illegitimate.”

But the award was not illegitimate, as it  turns out. It was very well-deserved, as the junior sensation was named MVP in both the FCIAC and CIAC league tournament finals and finished with an extremely impressive resume including 594 kills, 148 blocks, 198 service points and 21 aces.

We asked O’Connor about all of her great success in volleyball, and she said, “Being surrounded by a great team was key to my success, that along with my awesome head coach, Smerf (Nick Smeriglio), that was just so key for me to become a better player. I wanted to go to practice and I wanted to improve my game.”

O’Connor looks to keep her team on the very top next season as they chase their second FCIAC and CIAC league titles in two years. Andrea was enthusiastic about next season, stating that “Although we’ll be losing some of our top seniors, we have a lot of experience on our team and I know our younger players will step up to the challenge.”