A spike in success: Two local volleyball clubs shine at nationals By CHACE BrysoN | Editor Sometimes, even the best teams are forced to alter the goals they set. Even if it means going for 13th place. After a promising start to the USA Volleyball Boy’s Junior National Championships in Austin, Texas, earlier this month, the Diablo Valley Volleyball Club’s Cobra Kai 17U squad suffered three straight losses. The third loss — a grueling 21-25, 25-22, 16-14 loss to WAVE Spalding of Southern California — had eliminated them from any chance of making the championship flight of the tournament’s top 12 teams. Once determining that 13th place was the best it could do, the Cobra Kai squad set out to make it happen. The first match following the loss to WAVE was against a club out of Cincinnati. Cobra Kai rolled to a runaway victory (25-16, 25-13), and the momentum picked up from there. “We came back and smoked the next team and I think it was huge for us,” Cobra Kai coach Steve Siegmann said. “They realized (in that match) that they were a pretty darn good team.” Led by the hitting duo of Brendan Byrne (De La Salle High) and Jason Agopian (Deer Valley), and the libero play of Matthew Peretto (St. Patrick-St. Vincent), the Diablo Valley Club team rolled to six straight wins and finished the tournament with an 8-3 record to rank 13th out of more than 75 national-caliber teams. “Five of the 11 guys were at (nationals) for the first time,” Seigmann said. “It was good to see us to do so well with that amount of inexperience. It also makes us that much better for next year.” Cobra Kai wasn’t the only local club to excel at the national level. Just one week prior to Diablo Valley’s success in Austin, the Xceleration Volleyball Club of Pleasant Hill had its 18U girls team finish tied for fifth in the National Division of Girl’s Junior Nationals in Reno, Nev. “This group was just all about teammates and chemistry,” Xceleration coach Andy Schroeder said. “They were great friends who were tough and were able to overcome when they had to.” Mary Diamantidis (Miramonte), who was named to the all-tournament team, combined with Meghan Cooney (Carondelet), Morgan Borch (Las Lomas) and Jillian Matsuoka (Berean Christian) to lead the Xceleration to a 5-1 start to open the tournament. They finished 6-3, dropping their final match 25-14, 25-22 to a Cincinnati-based club. “We got off to a slow start in the first game and just never recovered,” Schroeder said. “But for a team in this area, a top-five finish, we were pretty happy about that.” Filling out the Xceleration roster, and contributing to the team’s success, were Dana Balding (St. Mary’s), Gabby Hands (Benicia), Emma Jackson (Albany), Megan Kehoe and Molly Kennedy (Bishop O’Dowd), Morgan Larmour (Heritage), and Alex Shurtz and Anisa Smith (Campolindo). ✪ 14
SportStars™
July 22, 2010
Upload photos and team stats! www.SportStarsMag.com