Copyright Hartford Courant
COVENTRY – Kara Polo decided she wanted to play volleyball in college instead of sitting on the bench, and didn’t mind that she had to move all the way across the country to do so. That was 36 years ago. Now, her daughter Abby is a senior setter for the Coventry volleyball team, helping lead the 19-3 Patriots – last year’s Class S runners-up – into yet another state tournament. The Patriots, whose only losses are to Class L champion Farmington, Class LL top seed Simsbury and Class L top seed East Lyme, are the top seed in Class S and looking for their 13th state title since 2003. Wednesday, Kara and her husband Tom, whom she met at UConn when they were students in the early 90s, watched as Abby, who has started for four years, had 31 assists, eight aces and 12 serving points in Coventry’s 3-0 (25-7, 25-8, 25-4) win over Wheeler in the second round of the Class S tournament at Coventry High. Coventry (18-3) will host International on Friday in a Class S quarterfinal at 5 p.m. “Somebody told me that (Abby played like her),” Kara said. “She said, ‘Oh, she looks like you playing.’ I never thought about that.” In 1989, Kara left her home in Tucson, Arizona to come to UConn to play volleyball. She had learned to play in junior high, playing matches outside on concrete (“We didn’t dive,” she said), then played in high school. She was interested in playing in college but she said the coaches she talked to weren’t sure if they could offer her playing time as a freshman. UConn would. So she packed up and bought a winter coat and moved to Storrs. And she liked it. So she stayed. She and Tom were married in 1997 and moved to Coventry in 2000. She started helping out at the high school when the late Matt Hurlock coached the team and she was there when Coventry started its volleyball dynasty and won its the first state title in 2003. She helped coach the JV team the next year when she was on maternity leave after having Abby’s older sister Ashla. The two girls played soccer, but they were around volleyball a lot and Ashla decided to play. Eventually Abby did, too, in sixth grade. “I used to love soccer,” Abby said. “I thought I was going to play. But then I ended up playing volleyball and I loved it.” She played club volleyball in sixth grade until the pandemic shut sports down. She picked it up again in eighth grade. Her mother was a setter; she encouraged Abby to be a setter, too. “When I first started, she said, ‘Not a lot of people are setters, so I think you should set,’” Abby said. “I really liked the role. Not all the spotlight’s on you – you’re giving (the ball) to other people. “She has helped me with so much and has a great mind for the game.” Said Kara: “She’s got the soft hands. She’s very aware of space around her. She was like that in soccer; she could see the whole field. I think she brought that here.” Abby didn’t start right away, but five or six games into her freshman year, coach Ryan Giberson knew he had to start her. “A lot of it is IQ,” Giberson said. “She was here when she was little. She reads the net extremely well. She gets every second ball. She has that good calm demeanor. She’s able to distribute and get everybody involved. It’s beyond what she does statistically. “It’s rare to have (a setter) start for four years. It goes back to the IQ; it’s more of a senior mentality position because you have to be the smartest player on the floor.” Abby, who plans to play in college, has been an All-State setter the last three years. Her freshman year, Coventry lost in the Class S quarterfinals then the Patriots won the title her sophomore year. Last year, they lost to Valley Regional 3-1 in the Class S championship game. “It’s fuel,” Abby said. “We know what happened last year. We made a lot of mistakes and our defense wasn’t the strongest. That’s been one of our main focuses. We want it this year.”
