GET A LODHA THIS: With Little Glory, Blotky Kept Team Together

Elizabeth Blotky was a fighter.

She didn’t make too many headlines. She didn’t win too many awards. And she didn’t single-handedly take over too many matches.

But that’s what you would expect of a libero, the least glorious of all positions in volleyball.

If you showed up at the Malkin Athletic Center on Friday night or Saturday afternoons during the fall, you would often hear fans ask the same old question.

“Why is No. 17 wearing a different-colored jersey?”

That unique jersey is for a unique position. It’s volleyball’s version of the designated hitter, except a libero is a defensive replacement. When Blotky entered the game, she took over a position in the rotation without costing Harvard coach Jennifer Weiss one of her limited substitutions.

So what’s the catch?

The libero can play defense and serve, but she effectively cannot attack the ball.

That isn’t exactly the easiest way to make an impact on the box score, since the highly coveted categories of kills and blocks are largely inaccessible to liberos.

But Blotky trucked along, sacrificing herself for her team—even though she played at the exciting outside hitter position in high school, even though she was recruited as an outside hitter, and even though she spent her freshman collegiate season on the outside before switching to libero her sophomore year.

Her hard work and dedication paid off in 2004-2005, her junior season, when Blotky and the Crimson won the first Ivy League title in Harvard volleyball history.

Unfortunately for the libero, however, her career would not end happily ever after.

A co-captain and the only senior on this year’s squad, Blotky had the difficult task of mentoring a very young Crimson team.

“She did a great job,” Weiss explained. “I mean, we had five freshmen and five sophomores. That’s a lot to lead—that’s a hard job, that’s a very hard job.”

But Blotky took her place under the yoke, knowing that her shoulders would have to carry the load.

Her burden didn’t get much lighter as the season progressed. Though Harvard performed reasonably well in the preseason, it quickly became apparent that the defending league champion was going to struggle to compete.

As loss after loss piled up, and after even the perennially pathetic Columbia Lions defeated the Crimson, Blotky began to realize that Harvard had quickly gone from scarily dominant to unimpressively beatable.

But the co-captain kept fighting, knowing that she had 13 other girls looking at her for leadership.

“To see her keep her cool, remain being a leader, and remain strong through a winning season last year and this year’s losing season, it’s remarkable,” said former teammate Kaego Ogbechie ’05. “It’s tough to be that confident player when you’re losing or when you’re done with half the season and haven’t won a game. So to see her really stay consistent and be that rock for the team, that’s simply amazing.”

Rather than losing hope and giving up on her team, Blotky kept fighting to get better. She further refined her defense and recommitted herself, establishing herself as a force to reckon with on the back row.

Her abilities were at full display in the Crimson’s 3-2 loss to Columbia in New York, N.Y., when the libero tallied a career-high 24 digs.

“All week in practice, [Blotky] definitely stepped it up,” fellow co-captain Sarah Cebron said. “I think this weekend was probably her best weekend ever.”

But the curse of the libero hovered over Blotky’s achievements, as even her impressive effort was not enough to propel Harvard past the Lions. Kills and blocks result in points, and Blotky could do nothing on that front, but inspire her teammates.

Still, the senior kept fighting, because that’s the only way she knew how to play.

“That’s why you have to love her,” Ogbechie said. “She has such a genuine spirit, and she always looks on the brighter side of things.”

Blotky and the Crimson entered Saturday’s contest against Yale with an 0-13 league record—a far cry from how the libero must have envisioned her senior night.

Nevertheless, Blotky gave it her all, even picking up a kill on the fourth point of the match when one of her digs soared over the net and fell between several Bulldogs.

She finished the night with 10 digs and one kill, statistics not worth writing home about. Go figure, she’s a libero.

But everyone in the building saw and felt Blotky’s presence in her last career start for Harvard.

“The whole team will definitely miss her,” Ogbechie said. “They’ll notice her absence next year.”

The Crimson may have finished this season 0-14 in the Ivy League, but Elizabeth Blotky will always be remembered as a winner.

—Staff writer Karan Lodha can be reached at klodha@fas.harvard.edu.