The short end of the stick: girls’ volleyball team bemoans disruptive gym floor waxing on eve of States

ARHS Athletic Director Victoria Dawson finds joy in her job despite the rigorous work she puts in to keep high school athletics on track. But sometimes, she faces hurdles in that role that dull her shine.

On Friday, November 10, the Amherst girls’ varsity volleyball team found out their gym floors were being waxed and they would not have a gym to practice in for a week. At any other time in the season, this may have been swiftly brushed aside but there was something different about this week. 

The girls, who had made it to the Western Mass Finals and had a 19-5 record were just days away from a State semi-final game and did not have a gym to practice in.

Dawson and head coach Kacey Schmitt were left to a last-minute scramble to find a new gym to practice in and set up new practice times. 

Senior captain Liza Beigel said it was a very frustrating event. “We feel overlooked as a very successful female sport here at the high school,” she said.

The girls ended up having to drive over half an hour to Frontier High School on Sunday afternoon to practice in their gym. This change of schedule caused at least five players to miss their last practice before the semi-finals because of prior commitments to work that were already put in place around the earlier practice schedule. 

Dawson has been one of the biggest supporters of women’s sports and sports in general at ARHS and said she was not a fan of how the floor-waxing was scheduled.

“For as long as I can remember the floors were waxed during Thanksgiving break when no one was here and it was confirmed all fall sports were done with,” she said. 

As a high school and collegiate athlete, Dawson said she often felt as though male-dominated sports were deemed superior to women’s sports. “Men’s sports had the highest fan turnouts at games even during seasons when women’s teams were excelling,” she said. 

So why were the floors being waxed at such a critical time?

Director of Facilities Rubert Roy-Clark did not respond to requests for comment from The Graphic. 

The volleyball team was clear that in their minds, the floor should be waxed before their season rather than after fall and before basketball. 

“[In our preseason], we had a problem with slippery floors. There were constantly times when the floors were [unsafe] in games and practice and we had very little traction. This caused people to continuously buy new shoes,” Beigel said. “I think performance would have been better with more tractioned floors.” 

Many other athletes on the volleyball team said they wondered if the floors were scheduled to be waxed early due to low expectations.  “It had been planned for a while so they had no belief in us that we would make it this far,” said a team captain, Talia Sadiq. 

In the end, the girls did not end up winning that State semi-final game. Although the end of the 2023 season was not the outcome they had hoped for, they are proud of what they achieved. 

“A big aspect of the season we were trying to accomplish was being bonded as a team unit on and off the court,” Beigel said. “The 2022 season we were not as close as we had hoped. There was some animosity that in my opinion didn’t let us reach our full potential as a team.”

The team hosted many team bonding events this year such as team sleepovers, pasta dinners, staying after practice to have pizza, and attending games of the other fall sports teams. “We wanted to have a fun season and I think this was accomplished,” Beigel said.