Post by FreeBall on Jan 2, 2007 20:18:08 GMT -5
The following article was in today's Lincoln paper. I thought that it was an interesting look at the continuing evolution of Junior VB within the State of Nebraska, particularly in the Omaha and Lincoln metro areas.
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New Sites Help Meet Volleyball Demand
BY RON POWELL / Lincoln Journal Star
Monday, Jan 01, 2007 - 11:53:38 pm CST
A overhaul of the state’s club volleyball system hardly seems necessary after producing the likes of Dani Busboom, Dani Mancuso, Jordan Larson and Rachel Schwartz earlier in this decade, all starters on NU’s 2006 national championship team.
But nothing stays the same, especially in the face of steady increases through the years in individual participant numbers and as well as total teams in club volleyball. In 2004, there were 4,198 girls on 480 teams statewide. More than 4,500 players are expected to compete in the upcoming club season, which begins this month.
Per capita, Nebraska is among the leaders nationally in club volleyball participation. Those numbers have far outstripped the number of adequate facilities available for practice and tournaments, especially in the Omaha and Lincoln area. The battles for gym time with other volleyball clubs and the various boys and girls basketball teams also competing in the winter have become intense.
It’s no wonder that four volleyball-only facilities for junior players have popped up in Lincoln and Omaha in the past year and academies are beginning to dot the Nebraska volleyball landscape. These are similar to the one-stop setups that some of the national elite programs like Front Range in Denver, Sports Performance in Chicago and Northern Lights in Minneapolis have had for several years.
Earlier this year, two of Lincoln’s largest and highest-level clubs, Nebraska Juniors and Nebraska One, agreed to merge into the Nebraska Volleyball Academy at the Abbott Sports Complex in northeast Lincoln. Twelve tournaments are scheduled for the facility’s 11 courts (four full-time volleyball courts that are cushioned Sports Courts, seven part-time courts shared with soccer and basketball) this winter and spring.
This is the second season for Nebraska Elite to use The Volleyball Center at Omaha’s Westroads Club. Three clubs — River City, Omaha Wave and Omaha Premier — are making The Courts in southwest Omaha their home, while Deb Grafentin operates The Volleyball Academy from that same facility. Nebraska Impact has its own building, The Digz in west Omaha.
“There will be growing pains, but in the long run, I think these (volleyball-only facilities) will be good for the sport,’’ said Jake Moore, the former director of the Nebraska Juniors who coached Lincoln Pius X to the Class B state championship last month. He will coach the Nebraska Volleyball Academy’s top 15-and-under team during club season.
“It makes everything more centralized, which increases the amount of practice time we can have. We’re not scrambling all over to find gym time. I think it will advance the level of play.”
Nebraska Elite director Tony Carrow says it took him five years to convince the Westroads Club management that girls club volleyball would be a good fit in the facility. It paid dividends immediately.
“We had our best results ever on the national level last year, and I think a lot of it had to do with training and practicing on a regular basis in our own building,” said Carrow, whose club has 19 teams this season and also hosts the President’s Day tournament, a 300-plus team event in February at the Qwest Center‘s convention area.
All of the new facilities “are going to increase demand and get the word out about club volleyball,’’ Carrow said. “There are still more people who don’t know about club volleyball than people who do. There’s potentially a couple thousand more players out there.”
These volleyball-only facilities are coming at a critical time for the sport. While the number of club players in the state has increased and Nebraska’s success on the college level has been unmatched, more and more of the top all-around athletes statewide appear to be choosing basketball over volleyball as the sport they want to pursue at the next level.
The last two girls high school athletes of the year, Megan Neuvirth of West Point Central Catholic and Amber Hegge of Crofton, were all-state volleyball players who picked college basketball careers. Neuvirth now plays basketball at Creighton, while Hegge, a South Dakota hoops and track recruit, is still a senior in high school.
The class of 2007 has produced seven Division I college volleyball signees so far, the smallest number of Division I recruits from Nebraska in this decade.
The trend is also prevalent in the state’s sophomore class. Four of the most athletic girls in the 2009 class — KK Houser of Lincoln Southeast, Marissa Kastanek of Crete, Merceedes Morgan of Bellevue East and McKayla Knudson of South Sioux City — are all basketball players.
That may be why the Nebraska Volleyball Academy has a definite Husker flavor to it in an attempt to turn the tide. NU assistant coach Lee Maes, a former junior national team coach, is the director of player and program development at The Nebraska Volleyball Academy. Lindsay Wischmeier, a former Husker player and current NU director of volleyball operations, coaches the academy’s top 17-and-under team. Mancuso and Busboom are both expected to be assistant coaches at some level.
The academy’s club director is Shelli Byrkit, a former all-stater from Clay Center who later earned All-America honors at Hastings College. She’s overseeing 14 teams with 139 club players from ages 13 to 18.
Guiding the academy’s No. 1 NVA 18s team is Gwen Egbert of Papillion-La Vista South, the long-time Nebraska Juniors coach. Egbert coached every in-state player on the Husker team this fall for at least one year of club ball. She has 6-4 Super-State middle blocker Brooke Delano of Bellevue West, an NU recruit, on this year’s academy squad.
Delano, also a Super-State basketball player, is proof that volleyball still wins its share of battles for the state’s best athletes.
Egbert, Papillion-La Vista’s coach when the Monarchs captured three straight Class A titles from 2000-2002, says she favors the more focused academy approach, but only if certain conditions are met.
“My biggest fear is people will get into this for the money and not for the kids,’’ Egbert said. “They have to keep it (the prices) as reasonable as they can, or they’ll price kids right out of the sport. For what the kids get, I think our prices are reasonable.”
The $1,500 fee the Nebraska academy players pay to be on open-level teams is approximately half of what Front Range charges for its elite teams. Included in the Nebraska academy’s package is a fitness membership to the Nebraska Tennis Center (also at Abbott) and workout sessions with Bob Anderson from Victory Human Performance.
Egbert also fears sports specialization from such an emphasis on club ball, something that will hurt the overall athleticism in the sport.
“We have to be willing to work with our multisport high school athletes and adjust our (practice) schedules some to fit them,’’ she said. “We can’t be pressing them to give up their other high school sports.’’
The academy doesn’t just cater to the all-state caliber player. It offers teams at the regional ($1,200 fee) and local ($900) levels from 13-and-under to 18-and-under. The academy also has a recreational level, a lower price alternative ($500) that competes in four local USA Volleyball-sanctioned tournaments, practices once a week and is coached by the academy’s staff.
There’s a club preparation program that runs once a week from Jan. 10 through May 2 for girls 13 and younger. Clinics and lessons for players of all levels and ages, regardless of club affiliation, are available.
“We want to offer year-round training to anyone who wants it,” Byrkit said. “We can’t accommodate every kid who wants to play club, but we’d love to make them all better.’’
Grafentin, the former Millard North and Bellevue University coach, is taking a similar approach with The Volleyball Academy in Omaha. The number of players taking part in lessons, clinics and camps in the first year “have exceeded our projections,” she said.
Offseason leagues are offered at the facility, as well as regular coaching clinics for both high school and club coaches.
“The growth in volleyball has created a need,” Grafentin said. “Fifteen years ago, you could’ve never tried something like this in Omaha or Lincoln. But there are more kids playing and more of them want instruction than ever before. But this is not just a volleyball thing. It’s happening in a lot of other sports, too.”
www.journalstar.com/articles/2007/01/02/sports/doc4599e3ee05c21534002350.txt
****************************************************************************************
New Sites Help Meet Volleyball Demand
BY RON POWELL / Lincoln Journal Star
Monday, Jan 01, 2007 - 11:53:38 pm CST
A overhaul of the state’s club volleyball system hardly seems necessary after producing the likes of Dani Busboom, Dani Mancuso, Jordan Larson and Rachel Schwartz earlier in this decade, all starters on NU’s 2006 national championship team.
But nothing stays the same, especially in the face of steady increases through the years in individual participant numbers and as well as total teams in club volleyball. In 2004, there were 4,198 girls on 480 teams statewide. More than 4,500 players are expected to compete in the upcoming club season, which begins this month.
Per capita, Nebraska is among the leaders nationally in club volleyball participation. Those numbers have far outstripped the number of adequate facilities available for practice and tournaments, especially in the Omaha and Lincoln area. The battles for gym time with other volleyball clubs and the various boys and girls basketball teams also competing in the winter have become intense.
It’s no wonder that four volleyball-only facilities for junior players have popped up in Lincoln and Omaha in the past year and academies are beginning to dot the Nebraska volleyball landscape. These are similar to the one-stop setups that some of the national elite programs like Front Range in Denver, Sports Performance in Chicago and Northern Lights in Minneapolis have had for several years.
Earlier this year, two of Lincoln’s largest and highest-level clubs, Nebraska Juniors and Nebraska One, agreed to merge into the Nebraska Volleyball Academy at the Abbott Sports Complex in northeast Lincoln. Twelve tournaments are scheduled for the facility’s 11 courts (four full-time volleyball courts that are cushioned Sports Courts, seven part-time courts shared with soccer and basketball) this winter and spring.
This is the second season for Nebraska Elite to use The Volleyball Center at Omaha’s Westroads Club. Three clubs — River City, Omaha Wave and Omaha Premier — are making The Courts in southwest Omaha their home, while Deb Grafentin operates The Volleyball Academy from that same facility. Nebraska Impact has its own building, The Digz in west Omaha.
“There will be growing pains, but in the long run, I think these (volleyball-only facilities) will be good for the sport,’’ said Jake Moore, the former director of the Nebraska Juniors who coached Lincoln Pius X to the Class B state championship last month. He will coach the Nebraska Volleyball Academy’s top 15-and-under team during club season.
“It makes everything more centralized, which increases the amount of practice time we can have. We’re not scrambling all over to find gym time. I think it will advance the level of play.”
Nebraska Elite director Tony Carrow says it took him five years to convince the Westroads Club management that girls club volleyball would be a good fit in the facility. It paid dividends immediately.
“We had our best results ever on the national level last year, and I think a lot of it had to do with training and practicing on a regular basis in our own building,” said Carrow, whose club has 19 teams this season and also hosts the President’s Day tournament, a 300-plus team event in February at the Qwest Center‘s convention area.
All of the new facilities “are going to increase demand and get the word out about club volleyball,’’ Carrow said. “There are still more people who don’t know about club volleyball than people who do. There’s potentially a couple thousand more players out there.”
These volleyball-only facilities are coming at a critical time for the sport. While the number of club players in the state has increased and Nebraska’s success on the college level has been unmatched, more and more of the top all-around athletes statewide appear to be choosing basketball over volleyball as the sport they want to pursue at the next level.
The last two girls high school athletes of the year, Megan Neuvirth of West Point Central Catholic and Amber Hegge of Crofton, were all-state volleyball players who picked college basketball careers. Neuvirth now plays basketball at Creighton, while Hegge, a South Dakota hoops and track recruit, is still a senior in high school.
The class of 2007 has produced seven Division I college volleyball signees so far, the smallest number of Division I recruits from Nebraska in this decade.
The trend is also prevalent in the state’s sophomore class. Four of the most athletic girls in the 2009 class — KK Houser of Lincoln Southeast, Marissa Kastanek of Crete, Merceedes Morgan of Bellevue East and McKayla Knudson of South Sioux City — are all basketball players.
That may be why the Nebraska Volleyball Academy has a definite Husker flavor to it in an attempt to turn the tide. NU assistant coach Lee Maes, a former junior national team coach, is the director of player and program development at The Nebraska Volleyball Academy. Lindsay Wischmeier, a former Husker player and current NU director of volleyball operations, coaches the academy’s top 17-and-under team. Mancuso and Busboom are both expected to be assistant coaches at some level.
The academy’s club director is Shelli Byrkit, a former all-stater from Clay Center who later earned All-America honors at Hastings College. She’s overseeing 14 teams with 139 club players from ages 13 to 18.
Guiding the academy’s No. 1 NVA 18s team is Gwen Egbert of Papillion-La Vista South, the long-time Nebraska Juniors coach. Egbert coached every in-state player on the Husker team this fall for at least one year of club ball. She has 6-4 Super-State middle blocker Brooke Delano of Bellevue West, an NU recruit, on this year’s academy squad.
Delano, also a Super-State basketball player, is proof that volleyball still wins its share of battles for the state’s best athletes.
Egbert, Papillion-La Vista’s coach when the Monarchs captured three straight Class A titles from 2000-2002, says she favors the more focused academy approach, but only if certain conditions are met.
“My biggest fear is people will get into this for the money and not for the kids,’’ Egbert said. “They have to keep it (the prices) as reasonable as they can, or they’ll price kids right out of the sport. For what the kids get, I think our prices are reasonable.”
The $1,500 fee the Nebraska academy players pay to be on open-level teams is approximately half of what Front Range charges for its elite teams. Included in the Nebraska academy’s package is a fitness membership to the Nebraska Tennis Center (also at Abbott) and workout sessions with Bob Anderson from Victory Human Performance.
Egbert also fears sports specialization from such an emphasis on club ball, something that will hurt the overall athleticism in the sport.
“We have to be willing to work with our multisport high school athletes and adjust our (practice) schedules some to fit them,’’ she said. “We can’t be pressing them to give up their other high school sports.’’
The academy doesn’t just cater to the all-state caliber player. It offers teams at the regional ($1,200 fee) and local ($900) levels from 13-and-under to 18-and-under. The academy also has a recreational level, a lower price alternative ($500) that competes in four local USA Volleyball-sanctioned tournaments, practices once a week and is coached by the academy’s staff.
There’s a club preparation program that runs once a week from Jan. 10 through May 2 for girls 13 and younger. Clinics and lessons for players of all levels and ages, regardless of club affiliation, are available.
“We want to offer year-round training to anyone who wants it,” Byrkit said. “We can’t accommodate every kid who wants to play club, but we’d love to make them all better.’’
Grafentin, the former Millard North and Bellevue University coach, is taking a similar approach with The Volleyball Academy in Omaha. The number of players taking part in lessons, clinics and camps in the first year “have exceeded our projections,” she said.
Offseason leagues are offered at the facility, as well as regular coaching clinics for both high school and club coaches.
“The growth in volleyball has created a need,” Grafentin said. “Fifteen years ago, you could’ve never tried something like this in Omaha or Lincoln. But there are more kids playing and more of them want instruction than ever before. But this is not just a volleyball thing. It’s happening in a lot of other sports, too.”
www.journalstar.com/articles/2007/01/02/sports/doc4599e3ee05c21534002350.txt
