Mount Carmel volleyball team sees the best in each situation

NEW ORLEANS – November has arrived.

It’s the best time of the year for the Mount Carmel Academy volleyball team – playoff time.

The Cubs seasons mostly end in one way as they have won six Division I state championships in the last seven seasons, eight in April Hagadone’s 14 previous seasons as head coach and 14 in program history.

But this season began as none other has.

Hagadone has kept reminding her players during the course of this season, “You can always look at the best of any situation.”

The Cubs had to do a lot of squinting early in the season to discern the best of their situation, but they’re 27-13 and seeded No. 3 after winning their last five matches of the regular season.

“Everything up to this point has gotten us to where they put us,” Hagadone said, “and (now) we go back to zero-zero.”

At 0-0, the Mount Carmel team might feel for the first time this season that it is on an even keel.

“All that matters is November,” senior outside hitter Olivia Stant said.

But whatever happens in November will be a byproduct of everything this team has had to overcome during the last three months.

* * *

A lot of Hagadone’s players participate in travel ball until late June, so she starts preseason practice a couple of weeks later than most coaches do. She wants to give her players time to start missing the sport so they’ll be more excited when they convene in August.

But this year’s late start was exceptionally late.

Mount Carmel participated in a couple of team camps in early August then held a sleep-over. The next day one of the players tested positive for COVID and the whole team “played it safe” and self-quarantined for 14 days.

The Cubs finally held their first practice on August 16 and conducted their first scrimmage a day later.

They squeezed in a few more practices and an August 26 jamboree in preparation for the season opener scheduled for September 7.

Then came Hurricane Ida.

The school canceled all afternoon activities beginning August 27, two days before Ida hit.

Some players rode out the storm with their families, and many evacuated as did Hagadone, who wound up near Tallahassee, Fla., with her husband and three children, ages 12, 10 and 4.

* * *

COVID and Ida packed a powerful one-two punch.

But much more heartache was awaiting Hagadone, whose mother, Barbara Barrios, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia nearly five years ago

“It’s been a steady decline since,” Hagadone said. “The last two years she didn’t really recognize us too much.”

Then Barrios, who was in hospice care at the family home, fell and suffered a seizure August 21.

She died September 1 while Hagadone was still evacuated in Florida.

“I’ve been grieving her for four years,” Hagadone said. “So this has been a long process. It’s definitely hard.”

One week after Hagadone’s mother died her godfather, Michael Regua, who was a cousin of her father Phillip Sr. and had been the long-time executive chef at Antoine’s, died after celebrating his 70th birthday the previous week.

In the meantime Hagadone returned from her evacuation in time for her mother’s funeral September 9.

At the repast at the family home, which was at ground zero for Ida in St. Charles Parish and “took a lot of damage,” Hagadone went to check on her grandmother, Shirley Roquetta, who also was in hospice care at the home.

“She took a severe turn for the worse,” Hagadone said. “So my sister (Robin) and I were looking for a priest to do her last rites after my mom’s funeral.”

Her father called the next morning to tell her that her grandmother had indeed passed.

“It was like a race to Heaven in that house,” Hagadone said. “So my dad lost his wife and his mom in a week. We were hit pretty hard as a family. It was a lot.”

Roquetta and Hagadone’s aunt had moved from California to live with Hagadone’s father seven months earlier.

“It helped so my dad and my aunt had someone to lean on when they were both taking care of my grandmother and my mom,” Hagadone said. “My kids and everybody said it was such a blessing that I got to really know my grandmother.”

You can always look at the best of any situation.

* * *
Then there was volleyball.

Mount Carmel’s opener had been canceled because of Ida so the Cubs began the season in the prestigious McGill-Toolen Tournament in Mobile, Ala., the same day that Hagadone’s grandmother died.

“I think I needed the distraction,” Hagadone said. “My team was coming from all different directions. At that point we’re 28 days behind as far as I’m concerned.”

Mt. Carmel lost five of six matches over two days, an unprecedented stretch of losing in Hagadone’s tenure.

“We lost our spark,” Stant said.

Hagadone noted that three of the five losses were 2-1 against a high level of competition.

“We were competitive; we just couldn’t get the win,” she said. “It was really good for the girls just to have a sense of normalcy. I think they were a little disappointed, but we said we can only go up from here.”

Two days after the tournament ended, Mount Carmel reopened.

“My kids went back to school and I just went on,” said Hagadone, who is in her fourth year doubling as the school’s athletic director.

The Cubs won their first three matches after returning, then lost to district rival and defending Division I state champion Dominican.

Then came a five-game winning streak, back-to-back losses, a six-game winning streak, a two-game losing streak, one win, one loss and a current five-game winning streak.

“Our season has definitely been a roller-coaster ride,” Hagadone said. “They’re a great bunch of girls. We’re moving in the right direction. We have won some big games and we have lost some big ones as well.”

Two weeks ago in the final match of the annual Catholic League Tournament, the players – all of whom showed up at Mrs. Barrios’ funeral – decided to wear purple beads on their shoe laces. Purple is the official color of dementia awareness.

“We do beads for anyone who has passed that is important to our community so we wanted to do it to honor Coach’s mom,” Wickersham said.

The Cubs wore beads five years ago in memory of one of Hagadone’s players, Ashley Code, who died of a brain tumor.

They wore them again three years later when Jillian Clark, a recent LSU graduate who had been part of two of Hagadone’s state championship teams, died in a helicopter crash in The Bahamas.

“They surprised me with the beads,” Hagadone said while trying unsuccessfully to hold back tears. “It was really sweet.”

In their second match wearing the purple beads, the Cubs beat perennial Division V powerhouse Country Day 3-0, just 10 days after losing to the Cajuns 3-1.

“We had our spark again,” Stant said of the victory in the rematch.

“We really came together,” Wickersham said.

* * *

The Cubs need just two wins at home to make their annual trip to the state tournament. If they get past No. 30 Zachary on Thursday they will face the winner between No. 14 Sulphur and No. 19 Comeaux.

Mount Carmel had won six consecutive state titles before St. Joseph’s knocked them out in the semifinals last season.

“That was pretty devastating,” Stant said.

The night after that loss, Wickersham was walking into Joe Yenni Stadium to watch her brother Kyle play quarterback for Archbishop Rummel against John Curtis Christian.

“I thought,” Wickersham said, “we’d be warming up for the state championship right now.”

Hagadone said the pursuit of a seventh consecutive championship created “pressure I didn’t even know I had on myself and on my team.”

“I guess I did feel a little relief after last year,” she said, “but you start again and try again.”

Even seeded as high as No. 3, Mount Carmel finds itself in the unusual position of being an underdog to win state.

The Cubs are 1-3 against No. 2 seed St. Joseph’s and 0-5 against No. 1 Dominican this season.

But getting to this point already has required overcoming significant challenges.

“We definitely have fight in us,” Wickersham said, “and we show it.”

Volleyball teams throughout Louisiana begin each season with a primary goal – to get to the Pontchartrain Center, traditional site of the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals.

But in an unfortunate, though fitting development for this season, the Pontchartrain Center is unavailable because of damage from Ida.

So if the Cubs do reach the destination they have targeted they won’t be the usual 12 miles from campus but rather 134 miles away in a building to which Hagadone has never brought one of her teams.

“Another new experience,” Hagadone said. “We go with the flow.”

And look at the best of any situation.

“We can be the first ones to win a state championship in the Cajundome,” Stant said.