Canton’s Brianna Trabucco explains her volleyball confidence
As an incoming freshman at Canton High, Brianna Trabucco decided to make the change from soccer midfielder to a sport — and position — she had never played before: setter on the Bulldogs volleyball team.
“My dad, my friends, and volleyball coach Pat Cawley encouraged me, and the setter position intrigued me because you’re like the playmaker, the quarterback, of the team,” Trabucco recalled. “I had been in that kind of role growing up as a basketball point guard and softball pitcher.”
By the time she graduated, Trabucco had captained all three sports and was a two-time Hockomock League volleyball Most Valuable Player. She ranks in the top five on the program’s single season and career assists lists.
“Brianna’s athleticism, drive, and leadership carried over from season to season,” Cawley said. “She always tried to elevate her teammates to play their best.”
However, prior to her first volleyball tryout, Trabucco was admittedly “mortified,” because she had never touched or served the ball.
Her father, Richard, a three-sport athlete who once played baseball in the Boston Park League, came to the rescue.
“Dad took me in the backyard and kept throwing the ball to me and we watched volleyball videos together, and that helped my confidence,” said Trabucco, who was previously coached by her father on AAU and town basketball teams.
“Brianna was the type of player who, the more talented the kids she went up against, became a better player,” Richard recalled. “I saw early on she was a natural leader.”
Cawley, a co-founder of Canton High’s girls’ volleyball program in 2001 and head coach since 2007, envisioned Trabucco as just right for the setter position — the same position Cawley played as captain at Girls Latin School and Boston College.
Trabucco, whose nickname on the court was “B,” and whose teammates called her one-handed winners “Bstings,” said setting is the hardest position to learn in volleyball.
“There are a lot of factors when you receive the ball, like releasing it with both hands simultaneously, and getting in synch with the hitters,” said Trabucco, who once dreamed of playing basketball for the powerhouse University of Connecticut women.
However, she eventually realized she was playing at an even higher level on the volleyball court and moved on to the Merrimack College women’s team.
There, from 2009-2014, she went on to become a two-time captain and currently ranks 6th in program history with 1,826 career assists.
She was praised as “a born leader,” by former Merrimack women’s volleyball coach T.J. Hajjar.
A communications major, Trabucco, 31, is now senior manager for internal communications at Analog Devices, Inc. in Wilmington, a leading high performance semiconductor supplier.
“I’ve worked there straight out of college, starting in marketing and analytics. Because I’m a people person, luckily, they eventually needed someone in communications,” said Trabucco, who lives in West Roxbury with her fiancée, Ryan Schwalbenberg.
“I’ve learned a lot from our chief executive officer, Vincent Roche, who started, like myself, as an intern,” she added, “that if you work as hard as you can every single day, you will be recognized and offered opportunities.
“It’s not unlike when I was playing sports. If we fell short,” Trabucco said, “it was not because I hadn’t tried my hardest.”
That tenacity and perseverance carried over to her job when Trabucco was sent to Munich, Germany, to work alongside her manager and help Analog employees at affiliates throughout Europe learn new sales techniques.
But when her companion suffered an injury, Trabucco, who did not speak German, had to go it alone, sometimes speaking to hundreds of salespeople at a time.
Once again, she held serve, successfully completing her assignment.
“Brianna has a terrific work ethic, and she brings abundant energy and enthusiasm to all that she does,” Roche said in an e-mail. With approximately 25,000 global employees at ADI, managing internal communications, he said, “is critically important and complex. Brianna consistently rises to the challenge through teamwork and high standards.”
Trabucco remains loyal to Cawley and the Canton team as a volunteer assistant when time permits, helping coach the setters and scrimmaging with the reserves against the starters.
“I would not have been the player I was without Pat, and I may not have played in college if not for what she taught me,” Trabucco said.
Cawley returned the compliment. “What set Brianna apart when she competed was her unwavering ability to play with confidence,” Cawley said. “She does a lot of talking to our kids about playing with confidence and desire, and to not be afraid to fail.”