Red Raider Girls Net OCL Volleyball Crown - Again

Collecting championship trophies might as well be made an annual Red Raider girls' volleyball holiday.

For Barnstable High School's top female student-athletes, it might as well also be a rite of passage.

For last night head coach Tom Turco's Barnstable High School girls volleyball team, now 17-0 on the 2011 campaign, was crowned Old Colony League champions after defeating guest Dartmouth, 3-0. Last night's win clinched the OCL title for the 12th straight year for Turco, who also boasts 13 Division 1 State Championship titles. it is the 13th time Turco's ladies have won the OCL title and it marks the 19th league or conference championship title since Turco took over in 1988.

It is also the 21st time in Barnstable High School's 30 seasons of offering volleyball at the varsity level that the girls have been crowned league or conference champions. And in this 30th anniversary season of Red Raider volleyball, well, Turco hasn't really deviated from the way he prepares for the season, the way he coaches during it and the way he gets his student-athletes to respond. Last night, Turco credited Pat Riley's book "The Winner Within: A Life Plan for Team Players" as a key reason for his program, and his girls' success.

"We use it as a textbook," Turco said, "and the seniors teach the classes. Given that, the players meet and set their goals for the season. Once those are agreed upon, then the entire season revolves around the acquisition of those goals."

Behind a core group of senior captains - Kaylee Deluga, Nikki Deluga, Carolyn Morin, Aine Cole, Lynne Hibbard and Lexi Malakhoff - combined with such underclassmen stars as Regan Bristol and Kayla Crook, to name a few, the Red & White welcomed the Dartmouth Indians to the gleaming parquet at BHS and dispatched of their visitors readily.

While the Red Raiders have played 17 games already - and won them all, including the October 9 Spalding Showcase of Champions in Holyoke, MA - it almost seemed as if last night's league-clinching win was matter of fact, a sort of perfunctory gesture toward something loftier. As it usually seems to be the case each autumn here in Hyannis, the number-one state-ranked Red Raider girls have their collective eyes on the biggest prize: the Division 1 State Crown.

"My role is to create an environment that gives them the best opportunity to get there. This demands a lot from the players and the coaching staff," Turco said. "They work incredibly hard and understand the values of sacrifice and teamwork."

If anyone can say they know or know how to define the essence of teamwork, then it is likely Turco would be the man. Coming into this season with a lifetime 506-52 win-loss record (.907 winning pct.), Turco's lock on a spot in the BHS Athletic Hall of Fame is guaranteed, barring the end of the world. And now with his girls at 17-0 and armed with a 523-52 lifetime record, it's fair to say before this school year is over Turco will become the all-time winningest coach in Barnstable High School history, surpassing the late, great katherine "Kay" Nehubian who finished her 42-year career just over the vaunted 500-win mark in girls basketball.

Interestingly, for someone whose name has become synonymous in Barnstable High School hallways with "winning," Turco isn't the type of person who rests on his laurels, boasts about them or wears his credentials around his neck like some sort of feigned badge of courage.

His role is to coach and to coach, as Turco well knows, is to teach. A special needs educator by day, a mentor of champion athletes by night. Turco truly comprehends the sense of humility any successful person needs in order to be deemed at the apex of his or her profession and if there is such a thing as an apex of girls high school volleyball coaching, then Turco is perched atop it.

Even so, he is quick to deflect credit to the players, of course, but also to his coaching staff.

"They (the players) believe in their hearts that they can achieve great things," Turco said, then added how few of the team's accomplishments could have been achieved, now or in the past, without the aid of his staff.

"Marylou Martin (asst. coach) has put in four hours a day for the past eight years to this program."

Senior captain Kaylee Deluga is another reason why this year's version of the Red & White Dynasty continues to excel. To date, Deluga has 173 kills, which to some regular Joe sitting on a sofa flipping channels might not mean much, but to afficionados of high school volleyball it means she pretty much leads the team in being an aggressive offensive standout, sort of like the Tom Brady of Red Raider volleyball, one might say.

Right behind Deluga is junior Regan Bristol, a tall, lanky go-getter who ranks second on the squad in kills with 135 on the season, to date. 

But leading the team in assists this season is a junior, Kayla Crook, who became the first junior since the program began in 1982 to notch 1,000-career assists on October 11 versus Brockton (1,003). She's since racked up a career-total of over 1,085 assists since that game and has 465 on the season (through Oct. 24).

But a discussion of "stats" for these whirlwind, champion Red Raider girls could go on ad infinitum. The true essence of who they are and what they've done thus far as a team, in Turco's mind, is what counts most.

"Barnstable is a great school to coach at," Turco said, again deflecting credit to the Red Raider community at large. "I love the element of competition varsity athletics provides (here)."