Madison Bell has played through bursitis in her elbow, a concussion that she didn’t realize she suffered until after the fact and all the other pains and bruising that came with having to splatter onto the court dozens upon dozens of times during a volleyball match.

It took a badly sprained ankle she suffered during a preseason practice to finally sideline Bell — against her wishes — at the start of this season.

“I couldn’t walk at all the next day, as it was a pretty bad sprain,” said Bell, an East Lyme High school senior. “It was the worst pain I ever felt.”

It may have been the worst pain Bell ever felt, but not being there for her teammates was even worse.

“I was back playing in five days,” Bell said. “I just tried to walk on it. The pain kind of goes away when you’re thinking about your teammates.”

Bell’s team-first attitude makes sense given she played libero, volleyball’s all-guts, no-glory defensive position. She played the position as well as anyone in the state, too.

Bell is The Day's 2017 All-Area Volleyball Player of the Year, the second straight season she’s earned the honor.

“She played all season long this year (through pain),” East Lyme coach Jack Biggs said. “Instead of being a player who said, ‘oh, I have to take three weeks off,’ she said, ‘absolutely not. I’m going to ice it and work through it.’

“There were two weeks where she was not playing her best, but she kept doing it. And she was never afraid to sacrifice her body for her teammates.”

Libero is among the most unglamorous positions in team sports. Ideally, the libero is the first player to touch the ball whenever it comes over the net and must pass it to the setter to start the offensive attack.

Liberos must cover the majority of the court. Diving onto the floor over and over is a job hazard. They’ll get credited with digs, but it’s not as sexy a stat as a kill for a point ... if a team even tracks the stat. Yet a team isn’t going to win without quality defenders.

A sampling of coaches in southeastern Connecticut all thought Bell was the region’s best player. She’s the first player in East Lyme history to start as a freshman.

Bell had 284 digs and served 66 aces this season, in which the Vikings were 13-9. She was also a Class L first team all-state pick for the second straight year. She finished with 997 career digs and will play at Eastern Connecticut State University next season.

“She had this toughness about her that you knew, regardless of age or grade, that she was going to try do everything to keep the ball off the floor,” Biggs said. “She already had this physical toughness about her, a mental toughness, which some players just don’t have.

“She’s able, regardless of what’s going on in a game, to rely on her toughness to make plays.”

Bell injured her right elbow to start last season’s Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I tournament. It led to bursitis, described by mayoclinic.org as, “the painful inflammation of small, fluid-filled sacs that cushion the bones, tendons and muscles near your joints.”

“There just was this huge ball on my elbow,” Bell said. “The trainer asked, 'Do you still want to play? You can play. It’s not going to stop you, just don’t dive on it.' So I had this golf ball hanging from my elbow.”

A trainer came up with a solution: put a foam “donut” around the elbow, wrap it with gauze, and tape it up.

Bell couldn’t bend her right arm as the wrap went above and below the elbow. There was a picture in The Day from the ECC final with her sprawling to dig a ball with that arm stuck straight.

East Lyme swept Norwich Free Academy to win its sixth ECC title in 2016. Bell had 11 digs to earn MVP honors. She never missed a match because of the injury.

“I have to put a pad on it now,” Bell said. “It still hurts to this day. One match this year, I forgot it. … I had to wear an old one. I hit it once (on the floor) and I couldn’t move my elbow the next few days.

“I try not to show that I’m hurt. When it comes to sports, everything goes away with the adrenaline and the team that I’m on.”

n.griffen@theday.com

The Day's 2017 All-Area Volleyball Team

Player

of

the

Year — Madison Bell (East Lyme)

Kayley Ericson (NFA)

Sydney Iannantuono (East Lyme)

Eliana Jewell (NFA)

Molly Kosma (Waterford)

Cynthia Petersons (Ledyard)

Nora Ryan (Fitch)