Ursuline volleyball star Furey looks to Harvard following lost senior season
WILMINGTON, Del. (BVM) — For the past five years at Ursuline Academy, there was one consistent when the girls volleyball team took the court — Corinne Furey would be lining up at her outside hitter position, typically donning the Ursuline reds with the No. 6 across her back. It had been this way since Furey first started for the Raiders all the way back when she was an eighth grader playing against girls up to five years older than she was.
“I was obviously super nervous at first because everyone was an upperclassmen,” Furey said. “But honestly, the seniors and all the upperclassmen were super welcoming as well as the coaches who were very supportive and helping me adjust my role on the team. … It honestly pushed me to develop as a player at a younger age.”
That season also helped set Furey on the trajectory she is on today. Originally, the young athlete had planned to go to Archmere Academy where her two brothers had gone before her, but the experience on the volleyball team changed her feeling towards the school.
“After that season, I was like I should give Ursuline another look,” Furey said. “I think that volleyball season made me rethink what I was going to do for the rest of high school because I loved it so much. Ursuline has such an emphasis on community and sisterhood and that’s something that showed up during that volleyball season.”
Furey has seen plenty of successes during her career at Ursuline. After helping lead the team back to the playoffs as an eighth grader, Furey, for her freshman year, helped lead the Raiders to a state runner-up finish. The next season, the sophomore helped bring the team to the pinnacle, winning the state championship over Padua Academy.
“That was surreal,” Furey said. “It was such a great culmination of all the hard work we’d put in from August up until that early November game. We worked really well as a team. We had a great comradery amongst us. … To clinch that victory that was really awesome.”
It was during this season that the 6-foot-1 outside hitter got the attention of Harvard University.
Gaining the attention of the Ivy League program didn’t come easy. Furey worked to get the attention of all the schools she had hoped to attend, slicing her own highlight videos and making cold calls and sending cold emails to hopefully strike up conversations with the coaching staff.
“I was sending tons of emails, making my own highlight films and casting a wide net to all the schools I might be interested in,” Furey said. “I had emailed Harvard my schedule and had done a little minicamp the night before. They came to a lot of my games and they liked what they saw and invited me to an unofficial visit.”
During a planned family trip to tour seven different colleges near the East Coast, the Furey family’s first stop was the famous campus in Cambridge, Mass. Going in, Furey already knew the prestige of the university in terms of academics, but the culture of the school’s volleyball program made her take an even closer look. By the time she had visited the rest of the college’s on her tour, it was clear that Harvard stood above the rest.
“Harvard I think was actually my first one,” Furey said. “The rest of the week I had so much information flooding in, but I just kept coming back to the feeling I had on that campus, with those coaches and getting to interact with those players. It was such a cool experience really to see this was something I wanted my entire life. This is what I worked for and dreamed for and that was kind of the first step in maybe seeing it come to life.”
Furey was so impressed by the school and the program she felt it necessary to personally call the coach and thank her for the tour. Harvard’s coach, impressed with her skills and personality, offered her a scholarship later on in the call.
“I had written notes to the coaches, but I wanted to follow up with Harvard over the phone because I kept getting that feeling still,” Furey said. “So I called up their head coach and explained how much I loved it and just kind of reiterated how I felt at home there and it really stood out. She was like ‘Yeah, we’d love to have you Corrine.’ I was like ‘What? Excuse me?’ and she was like ‘Yeah, we’d really love to have you there’s a spot for you up here, there’s a spot for you.’”
For Furey, it was the confirmation of a lifelong dream come true.
“When they offered me at that time I was kind of in complete shock,” Furey said. “That’s what I had dreamed for. I used to be with my mom and sit on the couch and we’d look through the Ivy League rosters and look at the Harvard players. We would watch the videos posted on YouTube of the various teams and watch the end of the year recaps and I just dreamed my whole life to be on one of those rosters and be a part of one of those programs.”
Her junior year went much like her previous three years playing for the Raiders. Furey dominated on her way to earning all-conference first team honors for the second year in a row and all-state third team honors. The Raiders made the state tournament for the third consecutive year before losing to Archmere Academy in the semifinal round. Furey was expected to help lead the Raiders to the same success during her senior season.
However, this year was different. Furey, like so many seniors this year, didn’t get to have her final season. This wasn’t due to the COVID-19 outbreak like most seniors though, but an injury, giving the young athlete a hurdle she had never faced before.
Furey, who played on the club team East Coast Power during her summers, tore her ACL and meniscus during a national tournament in Indianapolis last July. It was a first for the athlete who had been fortunate to only have a few smaller injuries during her time in high school.
“On the second day, I tore my ACL and my meniscus,” Furey said. “I was pretty crushed for our senior year because I was looking to build off of the progress and success we had made the last couple years as a high school team.”
While she worked to rehab her knee during the high school season, Furey was presented the opportunity to fully embrace a leadership role for her teammates as one of the seniors on the team. Even without playing a single game this season, Furey was honored by her teammates by being named the team captain for the year. While she couldn’t make her presence felt on the court as she had in the past, Furey was strongly supportive on the sideline, offering words of wisdom and encouragement to her colleagues throughout the season as the team again advanced to the state semifinals. The change was a new, but welcomed one for Furey.
“I moved back in with the team and started helping as a side coach,” Furey said. “Trying to help some of the younger players, the freshmen, the sophomores just because I knew how important and helpful it was when those senior captains before helped me when I was scared and new to the team. … It was different. It was challenging. I was still always upset not to be playing, but I was just thankful to be a part of the team and help the underclassmen the way I was helped when I was younger.”
Furey participated in the high school athlete tradition of signing her National Letter of Intent during a small ceremony at the school on Nov. 13. Once the ink hit the paper, it was a sense of excitement and accomplishment for the young athlete.
“That was a really exciting day,” Furey said. “In front of a lot of girls from the school in the auditorium with my high school coach Mrs. Heiss who I had been with the past five years introducing me and with my parents by my side, that was a really fun day. There had been a lot of ups and downs throughout the fall and the late summer months with the injury and recovery so that was definitely a highlight to say, ‘Hey, this is the future I’m going to next so there’s better things to come.’”
Furey will go into Cambridge with a bit of a chip on her shoulder, looking to make a statement after her off year, but also help to put Delaware volleyball on the map. Furey is the only member from her Harvard recruiting class not from the state of California, a volleyball hotbed. The athlete is out to prove that not only can Delaware create Division I caliber players, but elite ones.
“It makes me feel really excited,” Furey said. “I’d love to be able to make Delaware proud or something along those lines. Even just bring some representation to the East Coast for volleyball or up in the Boston area so we’ll see.”
The injury also adds some fuel to Furey’s competitive fire. Though she missed her final season with the Raiders, she wants to show she is at Harvard for a reason.
“I think it just motivates me to be my best and work to be my best,” Furey said. “Keep working on my skills and my mindset and be in that non-complacent territory. I’m not thinking ‘Oh, I’m ready.’ Every single day I need to work as hard as I can to be the best player and in the best shape and be in the best possible state I can be for the upcoming season.”
Now, nearly a year since the injury that wiped out her senior season, Furey is preparing for her next red-tinted uniform, switching from Raider red to Harvard crimson. Twelve months since her injury, Furey is still rehabbing each day to get the strength back in her knee. In June, she was even able to hit the volleyball again for the first time since her surgery.
“I hit my first five balls in 11 months since I hit before,” Furey said. “That was awesome. Everything felt good. Everything felt really good through the knee. It was kind of a full circle of getting back and kind of remembering how great it feels to be playing again. … I just want to bring 110% to the court each day. I have been without volleyball for a while and that was different and hard this year. I am definitely excited to bring my love of the game back onto the court.”
Given her high school success, it won’t be long before Furey becomes a staple in Harvard volleyball the way she did during five fantastic years with Ursuline.
