Photo by – Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey
Weehawken’s Rylee Iannaccone sets the ball. Weehawken defeats Dickinson, 25-23, 20-25, 25-22, in the second round of the Hudson County Tournament in Weehawken, on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.
When Rylee Iannaccone arrived at Weehawken High School, she was predominantly a softball player. Thanks to her openness to trying new things, she is scheduled to graduate this spring with nine varsity letters to her name. Six of them coming in sports she had never played on a competitive level before high school.
In addition to softball, she is set to compete in her third varsity season of volleyball and swimming.
“I like to try new things and I like to think I’m pretty outgoing,” said Iannaccone, who credits coaches Raquel Roder and Stephanie Ross for pushing her. “At first, I may come off pretty shy, but I’m pretty outgoing in certain things.
“With (Weehawken) being such a small school, it leaves a more personal connection with each sport.”
As a freshman, Iannaccone decided to go out for volleyball rather than cheerleading. Despite standing at just 5-foot-2, she has grown into one of the NJIC’s better setters, earning All-NJIC Meadowlands Division honors as a sophomore.
“I had never played it (competitively) in my life before. I played it with my friends in gym class, but never seriously,” said Iannaccone, who now considers volleyball her best sport. “I was going to do cheer in fall instead of volleyball and I opted out. I decided I’m not going to do cheer, I’m just going to focus on volleyball and see if this is something I can do. I came in freshman year kinda new (to the sport) and not so good at it. But then I came in sophomore year working really hard and my teammates really pushing me.”
As a team, the Indians have enjoyed a resurgence in this time, going from 0-19 in 2015 to 10-13 in 2017 and then 12-12 last season.
In Iannaccone’s view, the improvement is due to a chemistry that comes with having such a small school that most of the athletes compete together in multiple sports.
“With it being such a small school, it leaves a more personal connection with each sport,” Iannaccone said. “There’s a core group of girls that play softball and volleyball. We have a good relationship and I honestly think that’s why our records just keep getting better and better each year. Every season we get better because we grow as a team together.”
That core also brought the Indians unprecedented success in softball when it reached the Hudson County Tournament semifinals for the first time before losing to eventual champion Secaucus.
Iannaccone enjoyed a breakout junior season this spring, hitting .407 and leading the team with 19 runs scored.
While Weehawken had established a history of success in softball in recent years, there isn’t a track record like that in swimming as the program enters its third year of existence.
It’s a challenge that Iannaccone liked the idea of when she joined the team in its inaugural year.
“I had tried basketball, but it just wasn’t my thing and I swam my whole life on my own since a very young age,” Iannaccone said. “So I decided to join the team and my coach made me a co-captain.
“Honestly, it’s an honor and really cool to start off.”
Iannaccone hasn’t set out any individual goals for her senior seasons, instead focusing on team-oriented ones. Knowing that it very well might be the last year of competitive sports for her and many of her teammates, there’s a definite feeling of making this final experience count.
“I’ve thought about this so many times. I’m going to have a moment where it’s just going to be me and my teammates where we look at each other and be like this is it, we have to do this,” she said. “We have to do it because we’ve worked so hard together for so many years and this will be our last time.”
