Sparkill, N.Y. - The St. Thomas Aquinas College Women's Volleyball returns to the court for the 2025 season, with a new coach and big expectations. A retooled Spartans roster is also set to make a run at the East Coast Conference postseason.
The Spartans were selected to finish seventh in the annual ECC preseason coaches poll released in late August.
In 2024, STAC finished with an overall record of 7-18 and a 1-11 mark in ECC play.
The Spartans return ten players from a season ago, as Kaylin Hamilton (10 M, 5 SA & 16 DIGS), Addison Miller (25 M, 37 A, 18 SA & 118 DIGS), Dahiana Garcia Atuesta (24 M, 36 A, 8 SA & 208 DIGS), Anna Gazzerro (14 M, 1 K, 235 A, 28 SA & 77 DIGS), India Newman (1 M & 1 K,), Christianna Roberts (25 M, 61 K, 1 A & 19 DIGS), Chloe Weiting (24 M, 152 K, 11 A, 6 SA & 98 DIGS), Natassia Romanoff (8 M, 2 K, 1 SA & 2 DIGS) and Greta Santini (25 M, 252 K, 17 A, 38 SA & 215 DIGS) will make up the core returning to Sparkill this fall.
Five very talented student-athletes from Pennsylvania, New York, Hungary and Spain; Leila Noboa Santos (Fr.|S|Pocono Mountain, Pa.), Emma Carolan (Jr.|DS/L|North Babylon, N.Y.|Saint Anselm College), Boglarka Kiss (Jr.|DS/L|Szeged, Hungary|Colby Community College), Adriana Zarceno (Fr.|OH|Oviedo Asturia, Spain) and Laura Rojas Gomez (So.|OH|Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain|Hesston College) will each look to bring their energy, enthusiasm and skill to a Spartans squad on the rise.
The biggest change to the STAC Women's Volleyball program in 2025 will be on the sideline, as Nicholas Basco comes onboard as the team's head coach. Basco arrives in Sparkill after spending the last two seasons as an assistant coach for the Fairleigh Dickinson Men's Volleyball program in New Jersey, where he has been involved in all apects of the program. It included organizing and facilitating meetings, practice schedules, game-day logistics and film sessions. He was also responsible for coordinating and managing recruitment, including the scouting of potential student-athletes and evaluating talent, while also ensuring NCAA Division I compliance and institutional policies, maintaining detailed records and documentation.
Coach Basco's talents also took him to the Garden Empire Volleyball Association, where he served as an assistant coach for Boys Under-17 squad in the summer of 2024. Nicholas lead the tryout and evaluation sessions, helped coordinate and run drills with the emphasis on executing team development, worked with individual players to develop fundamental and advanced skills and managed team logistics during games to ensure players were well prepared and focused for competition.
Basco's collegiate playing career spanned four years (2020-23) at Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts, where he earned the New England Collegiate Conference's Defensive Player of the Year award in 2021 and was a part of an NECC Conference Championship in 2023. His 2023 squad was also ranked in the Top-15 in the American Volleyball Coaches Association Division III poll.
Basco's staff also includes new assistant coach Nathan Lucia. Freshmen Mishelle Grajales Escoboar and Rhianna Jean-Noel will serve as the team's managers for the upcoming season.
STAC opens their new campaign on the road, at Southern Connecticut State University in a tri-match against the Owls (11:00 a.m.) and Jefferson University (1:00 p.m.) on Saturday, September 6.
2025 ECC Women’s Volleyball Preseason Poll
1. Mercy - 40 points (2 first-place votes)
2. D'Youville - 38 points (3 first-place votes)
3. Daemen - 37 points
4. Queens - 36 points (2 first-place votes)
T-5. Molloy - 19 points
T-5. Roberts Wesleyan - 19 points
7. St. Thomas Aquinas - 7 points