KYLE HUMPHREYS
Staff Writer
The more effort you put in, the more you get out. Number 11 and co-captain of the women’s volleyball team, Tina Ceriello, 21, has the 4.0 GPA and accomplishments of someone who knows this well.
A determined and competitive athlete, Ceriello has earned three awards in the past several months for her academic and athletic achievements. Besides making the Dean’s List numerous times, the senior was named Libero of the Week by the Northeast-10 Conference numerous times in numerous seasons, earning Libero of the Year of 2019 in her final season at The College of Saint Rose. Ceriello is the second athlete in the college’s history to earn Libero of the Year. She was also chosen for the Academic All-America first-team by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) in 2019 and earned second-team honors in 2018 despite the team not having made regionals that year. In 2018, she also earned the Google Cloud Academic-All District Honors and Google Cloud All America Volleyball Second Team for her academic and athletic performance. In February this year, she was awarded the Northeast-10 Sports Excellence Award for her academic and athletic performance as well.
“One of the things I said I was gonna[sic] do was I wasn’t gonna[sic] leave college, or at least my athletic career, with any regrets,” said Ceriello. “I can honestly say that I don’t look back with any regrets. I think I accomplished award-wise everything I wanted.”
Her favorite athletic memories besides those shared with her teammates off the court are beating Adelphi this season 3-2 and beating Saint Anselm in their own gym in 2018 where she made 25 digs. The final score was 3-2.
Born and raised on Long Island, Ceriello is the youngest of three children from Plainview, N.Y. Her sports career started at 4 years old with soccer. She continued to play that for several years, adding basketball to her plate at 8 years old. After giving swimming and dancing a try, Ceriello fell in love with volleyball at the age of 12 despite a repeated dislocated knee that required surgery. As a stay-at-home mom, her mother had the time to coach her in basketball and volleyball and guide her athletic career. They talk almost daily, and her mother has attended or streamed almost all of her games.
Ceriello enrolled at The College of Saint Rose to play volleyball in division two and to pursue a bachelor’s degree in communication sciences and disorders. Therapy was a strong interest of hers, but she had always been fascinated with communication after watching her father’s mother lose speech and her mother’s mother lose her hearing. Her firsthand experience with impaired communication in her large and social Italian family has further fueled her passion in her studies. Participating in the Language Intervention For Tomorrow initiative at Sheridan Preparatory Academy was a valuable learning experience, but it lead Ceriello to realize working with kids wasn’t for her.
“I wouldn’t mind working with kids once in a while, but I do like the geriatric adult population,” said Ceriello. “I am the youngest on both sides of my family so I’ve grown up around older people and seen how much they offer the world and how much knowledge they have, how much I can learn from them.”
The connections she has with her teammates changed her. She feels as though she’s a different person today than she was when she arrived for preseason her freshman year. The lessons she has learned on the court have helped her off the court in her personal life and coaching. She and her fellow co-captain for the 2019 season, Kyla Archie, 20, are natural leaders for their teammates. Archie joined the team as a freshman when Ceriello was a sophomore, and Archie always remarked that she was mature and level-headed. It’s easy to see why she was chosen as co-captain by her coach and teammates.
“While she’s playing her position, she’s leading everyone else in how to play their position,” said Archie. “Really good communicator, not only playing her position but helping out every other position around her.”
Vanessa Volpe, head coach of the Women’s Volleyball team, can also attest to Ceriello’s excellent leadership and communication skills. When Ceriello first came to the college, Volpe had begun her first semester as head coach after serving as assistant coach for three years. She saw Ceriello grow from the moment she walked onto the court. Ceriello takes self-initiative and ownership for her actions. Ceriello’s time management has never allowed sports to get in the way of her academics or vice versa.
“Being that she is a good court libero and has earned that spot for the last couple of years, her natural ability and leadership on the court helps portray the captainship there,” said Volpe. “She is an incredible student outside the gym, responsible and trustworthy…all the qualities that you would want in a leader she has.”
One unlikely friend of Ceriello is Madison Gerace, who played the same position with Ceriello. Gerace and Ceriello initially didn’t express much interest in each other, finding they both had different priorities off the field. Gerace described Ceriello as her polar opposite, but once they began talking they found they had more in common than expected. As they conversed and shared memes, the two friends became formidable forces on the court. They had plenty of fun, but worked just as hard. Ceriello was a major influence on Gerace’s academic career and personal life, encouraging her to go to the library to study together.
“I think I got really lucky,” said Gerace. “I think she is the most phenomenal person.” Gerace and Ceriello still speak frequently despite Gerace having graduated after her fall 2019 semester.
A family-oriented person, Ceriello would like to stay at home on Long Island when she attends graduate school for audiology. She aspires to assist adults with communications disorders in her future career. She and Archie are avid planners and intend on getting an apartment together in New York City while they pursue graduate school.
“…underclassmen look up to her,” said Volpe. “They can definitely see the holes the seniors have left but it gives them more of a drive to step up and fill those shoes.”
