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All-star pow wow: Amber McCray (left), Marcie Hampton, Michelle Moriarty and Nirelle Hampton

Sights and Sounds From Lone Star, Part 1

LoneStarVolleyball teamed with PrepVolleyball.com to provide continuous coverage of the Lone Star qualifier over the weekend. The following story appeared on the popular national web site on April 19 and is reprinted here by permission of PrepVolleyball.com

April 19 — And how did you spend your Spring Break? If you are a player, coach or parent for Sports Performance you spent it in Tianjin, China playing against professional, college and high school teams. You joined the pros for brutal daily practice sessions. You didn’t have time to worry abut SARS or the war in Iraq because you were playing in front of thousands of fans who filled the gyms with a clouds of cigarette smoke. In your spare time, you learned the fine art of bartering at a downtown market. And you climbed the Great Wall of China.

Then you went home (a 21-hour flight), took some time off and prepared for your first qualifier of the year in Austin.

“It was unbelievable,” said Sports Performance coach Cheryl Butler between matches at Lone Star. It is the team’s first tournament since the trip to China. “You can tell it, too, can’t you,” she said. “We’re a little rusty.”

Even though they are now focused on qualifying for nationals, the Spri players are still talking about China. Spri opened the 9-day trip with a match against the Tianjin professional team, whose players range in age from 16 to 30 years old. Spri captain Meg Eckert says the match against the pro team was something she’ll never forget. “There were four thousand people there and there was a huge cloud of smoke because they all smoke cigarettes.”

The most grueling part of the trip were the morning practices with the pro team, followed by an afternoon scrimmage, followed by a match against a college or high school team in the evening.

“I thought we practiced hard,” said Eckert, “but it’s nothing like they do. They work an hour-and-a-half on defense every day and it is intense. It’s a totally different game. It’s really fast and they are a lot bigger than I thought they would be. I think it helped our game a lot.”

Coach Butler says the girls didn’t seem at all concerned about SARs or the war. “It was really the parents who were more concerned,” she said. “But the government told us we would be safe and they would take care of us.”

“We had our anti-bacterial stuff just in case,” added Eckert.

Getting around wasn’t a problem since Spri assistant coach Ping Cao played on the Chinese Olympic team and the players were provided with two translators.

Oh yes, although Butler says the players were obviously rusty on Friday, they had little trouble cruising to first place in their 3-team pool by beating Block Party 25-17, 25-9, 25-15 and Texas Advantage 25-14, 25-20, 27-25.

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High power pow-wow: Former Junior National teammates Amber McCray of East Texas Juniors and Marcie Hampton of Team Texas were spotted hanging out together between matches. Team Texas coach Frankie Velez can only imagine what might have been. “We talked to Amber about playing with us,” said Velez, shaking his head, “but since her mother is one of the club directors for East Texas she didn’t think it would be right.”

Texas Tornados and Team Texas, seeded 1-2 in their pool, met for the second time this year in a battle for bragging rights of Houston. The Tornados yelled “represent” when they broke their huddle - as in “represent Houston,” said all-star setter Jenny Andrew. And as was the case earlier this year in Indianapolis, the Tornados simply had too much firepower, walking away with a 25-17, 25-22 win behind the impressive play of Kelly McAnelly and Becca Sartori.

“I guess there is a little added incentive when we play them” Andrew said of their local rivals. “We both want to be the best team in Houston, so it makes you want to win it a little more.”

The Tornados have also taken on a new theme this year: “Be The Wolf.”

“Coach (Chuck Schneider) has poster that says ‘you can be the wolf or you can be the sheep,’ and we decided we wanted to be the wolf,” said Andrew.

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Easter bonnets are the fashion of the weekend for TNT’s 17 National team -- for the moms and players anyway. TNT OH Sandra Ayala’s dad Jerry and brother Anthony became major “fashion don’ts” when they tried them on, though.

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Top-seeded Tampa Bay faced the very real possibility of losing to the fourth-seeded team in its pool, East Texas, until jump-serving Sarah Kirkwood came to the rescue. Trailing 11-4 in game three to East Texas, Kirkwood served 11 straight points to save the day. Kirkwood, Heather Huber, Nicole LeBlance and the rest of the hard-hitting visitors from the East Coast went on to win their pool despite a strong challenge by Dallas Skyline which, at 23-23 in game two, was only a couple of points away from forcing a game three.

Despite the loss, Dallas Skyline club owner, 18s coach and new mother Jodie Rye may have been the happiest person in the convention center.

Last week Rye’s club, which is only four years old, won its first JOs Open berth when the 15s Roshambo team finished third in the Lone Star qualifier.

“We’re still on cloud nine,” she said, adding that the wait last Sunday to find out how her team was doing almost drove her crazy. “I was trying to find out if we got into the third place match (which would have guaranteed a bid since two of the top four teams had already qualified). I knew they were playing at 9:30 and the coaches were supposed to call me. It was 11:30, I’m sitting in church and we hadn’t heard anything. So I’m sitting in church trying to hide my cell phone so I can dial it and find out how they did.” She finally received word a little after noon.

Rye’s top 16, 17 and 18 teams are all still in the Open hunt going into Saturday’s action.

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No, Corpus Christi Volleyball Club coach Rick Vanbrunt (photo at right) isn’t growing a second head. That “growth” sticking out of his shirt all day was an Ozzie Osbourne bean-bag doll. “One of the parents gave it to me to use as a stress reliever,” said Vanbrunt. He needed it Friday as CCVC finished fourth in a pool that included Nevada Juniors, Houston Juniors and Wichita Flyers.

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Only Alamo wasn’t able to match its #1 pool seeding among 18s Open teams on Friday. Alamo, playing without Kele Brewer who is no longer on the team, finished third behind South Shore and Team Kansas City. Alamo almost fought its way back into Division 1. In their first cross match they knocked off North Dallas, which is without setter Tasha Arsenych who is attending a relative’s funeral. They then lost a heartbreaking slugfest to Dunes 30-28 in the final cross match.

In 17s Open, Willowbrook finished third, behind Dallas Skyline and South Shore in pool 5, while St. Louis and Tampa Bay flipped their 1-2 seeding in pool 6. All other top seeds finished first.

In 16s, all the top seeds held form except AMV, which finished third behind Sports Performance and Dallas Skyline in a three-team pool.

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And finally, the Lone Star Late Night Award goes to Texas Block Party and CJVA 16s who tipped off the final match of the evening at just past 9:30 Friday night (special honorable mention goes to the girls from Texas Juniors who had to stay and call lines). Fortunately for the players (and the parents) it was a one-game playoff. The teams had started play at 2:30 in the afternoon and actually finished pool play at 4 p.m., but a 3-way tie forced the playoff. Several CJVA parents and players, not knowing there was volleyball still to be played, left the convention center and were at TGI Fridays to secure a table for the team. They had just been called to the table when the cell phone rang with word that they were needed back at the convention center to settle a three-way tie. As of 10 p.m. when all was finally quiet in the Austin Convention Center, there was no word on whether TGI Fridays held the table.

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Sights and Sounds From Lone Star, Part 2

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