The Hahnville volleyball team had a season to remember in 2016, and the All-District 6-I team is quite reflective of that.The Tigers’ Kylie Roux earned offensive MVP honors and HHS coach Mendi LeBoeuf was named the district’s Coach of the Year after the two led Hahnville to its first district championship in a decade and an opening round playoff victory.
Hahnville’s Ellie Bergeron, Stephanie Oubre and Gabby Constant joined them on the All-District first team. Destrehan’s Allison Carmichael and Gia Zeringue each earned All-District first team honors.
The rest of the first team included H.L. Bourgeois’ Victoria Battaglia (Defensive MVP), Dae Gasery, Chris McElroy and Erica Jobson and Thibodaux’s Tierra Johnson.
The All-District Second Team included Hahnville’s Allison Plaisance; Destrehan’s Claire Dantin, Abbey Richardson and Noelle Kelley; East St. John’s Charades Berthelot; H.L. Bourgeois’ Kaitlyn Hebert and Megan Leonard and Thibodaux’s Hailey Alcorn, Alexis Clement and Christin Bland.
Roux and LeBoeuf led Hahnvilleto a 27-11 record this season, breaking through to another level after being swept in three matches in 2015 by then-district champions H.L. Bourgeois. This season, the Tigers beat Bourgeois both home and away avenging their nemesis from the previous season. Hahnville went unbeaten in district play this season, including a sweep of rival Destrehan.
HHS earned the No. 9 seed in this year’s Division I playoffs and rolled past Bonnabel in a first round home playoff match. Hahnville had reached the playoffs in each of the previous four seasons, but had fallen in the first round each time.
“Obviously, the district championship was a major goal for this group, especially our seniors, and it feels great to see them come through,” LeBoeuf said. “This group of seniors, it’s just a great group of kids. They work extremely hard. I’m really happy with what we accomplished.”
The Tigers’ season eventually came to an end at No. 8 Chapelle.
Destrehan (14-19) saw tremendous improvement, meanwhile, as the season went on. A new coaching staff and an influx of underclassmen meant there would be a learning curve, but it has set the Wildcats up to potentially make a leap forward next season.
“Toward the middle of season, we really picked it up,” Destrehan coach Edward Borgstede said. “We did a lot of traveling and played in hostile environments. We were playing a lot of freshmen and sophomores, so you make mistakes and clean them up. I wouldn’t change it for the world. We’re trusting the process and even if it doesn’t look good now, by next year we can take off.”
The Wildcats will lose two seniors in Abbey Richardson and Tabitha Tabb going into next season, but the majority of rotation players are set to return.
“That’s significant,” Borgstede said. “Everyone had a chance to specialize and focus on doing things at this level.”
Some of the returning standouts include sophomore Allison Carmichael, who led her team with 703 assists, sophomore Noelle Kelley, who made 363 digs, sophomore Gia Zeringue, who made 207 kills, and freshman Mallory Laumann, who made 200 digs.
“We knew we were a year away,” Borgstede said. “We’ll be so much stronger next year. We have a good incoming class. One good thing is we run the same scheme for both our JV and varsity teams so there’s not as much adjustment once the jump to varsity is made.”
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