Burlington High volleyball has certainly done a nice job of becoming one of the school’s most consistent winners.
This fall, the Red Devils piled up 16 regular-season victories, earning a state tournament home match in front of a big crowd.
Hats off to the BHS head coach Wingsze Seaman and her staff, who continue to develop players that are relatively new to the sport.
“We don’t really have a feeder program,” said Emily Miliano, the junior varsity coach at BHS, who helped fill in for Coach Seaman during the state tournament. “We don’t have a middle school program so we get a lot of girls whose first time playing is when they walk into the gym their freshman year. For us to be able to build a program where we make states pretty much every year is a great thing. We have a ton of girls coming out every year looking for a competitive program and we can give it to them.”
Senior middle hitter Chloe Abuto is one of the best examples for the Red Devils.
Just ask Milton coach Al Mirabile, whose team edged out BHS in that playoff match by a 3-2 score, winning the fifth and final set by a 15-12 score.
Mirabile said he watched Burlington play on tape prior to their state tournament match against the Red Devils.
What the tapes didn’t really show was how difficult it would be to deal with Abuto and her teammates.
“She’s explosive and she’s smart,” the coach said. “She’s not just trying to crush every ball. She mixes in her tips and you have to respect the attack. It opens up her tip game.”
Amazingly, Abuto didn’t start playing volleyball until she was a freshman and only played JV as a ninth grader. In a short time, she developed into one of the area’s top hitters.
“She’s been on the team for three years now and she has been absolutely outstanding,” Miliano said. “When that ball gets put to her, she puts it down there. There’s really no stopping her when she really connects with that ball. Chloe is a great example of someone who came into this program never playing. She works hard, she works in the offseason and you can see how it can turn out.”
In Burlington’s first set against Milton, Abuto has six kills and three service points.
She helped BHS win seven more points in set No. 2 and won three more points on her serve, before Milton did everything it could to keep the ball away from Burlington’s No. 14.
“Chloe is going to be missed next year definitely,” Miliano added. “She’s a big presence on the court. We’ll miss her, but we’ll hopefully have some girls coming up that can fill those shoes.”
