Tawa’s Club Dots: Condolences for Venom Volleyball; 2021 USAV Open review, Lone Star 18s qualifier

This is “Dots,” VolleyballMag.com’s weekly look at 10 things in club volleyball, past or present, that interest me and hopefully will interest you. Look for Dots every Tuesday through Junior Nationals this summer.

• The club volleyball world is reeling this week after a Thursday accident left one member of Venom Red 18National dead and two others critically injured.

Venom, a club from the Greater Phoenix area, was scheduled to play in the 2022 adidas Lone Star 18s National Qualifier in Austin, Texas, hosted by Austin Juniors Volleyball Club. Some flights from Phoenix to Austin were canceled due to an ice storm that hit the Texas state capital and the surrounding area.

A couple of Venom parents decided to rent an SUV and make the drive east, with five others in tow, including several members of the Venom Red team. Venom club director Jimmy Gonzalez told media that the SUV hit a stretch of black ice two hours from Austin, swerved out of control and hit a semi-truck head-on.

Five in the back of the SUV, who were not belted, were ejected.

Alexa Cruz passed away.

Gabby Romero and Vanessa Ramirez suffered severe injuries.

This tragic accident has produced a tidal wave of support from the volleyball community nationwide. There were remembrances at the tournament. A GoFund me page for medical and funeral expenses — https://www.gofundme.com/f/nuca4x-medical-expenses-and-funeral-expenses — has already raised three times the original $50,000 goal.

Thursday’s accident comes almost two years after two KiVA volleyball coaches and their two volleyball-playing daughters were killed while traveling from Louisville to Kansas City for the Triple Crown NIT.

Almost 15 years ago, former Austin Juniors standout Madison Bingaman and her mother were killed while driving to Maryland, where Bingaman had received a scholarship to play at the University of Maryland – Baltimore County as a freshman.

Thursday’s accident hit AJV leadership especially hard, with finance and recruiting director Kathy Lietzke saying that everyone in the club was “devastated.”

The six survivors of Thursday’s accident all have injuries. Most are still hospitalized in Texas. Venom Volleyball released a statement yesterday about their players and families who were in the accident:

“They have a long road to recovery with many broken bones, surgeries now and possibly in the future. Last night we held a Prayer Service for Venom families to bring hope and healing. We are sending lots of love and support even though we are miles apart. Also we can happily say the remaining teammates (those that were waiting in Austin) have made it back home safely.”

VolleyballMag.com joins the rest of the volleyball universe in sending its condolences and prayers of love and healing to Venom Volleyball and the accident victims.

• At PrepVolleyball.com, which I founded in 2003, we honored Andi Collins, a 16-year-old who died that year from invasive breast cancer, with the Andi Collins Award to the best senior setter. While I was at Prep, I wrote every year that after pausing to reflect on Andi’s life, it was time to go on, “Because those of us still living must go on. It is the only way.”

With that, let’s turn to volleyball news past and present, but let’s not fail, periodically, to take notice of Alexa Cruz, a young life ended much too soon, and be inspired by this young woman, who was traveling to play the sport she loved.

• Let’s continue this 2022 club volleyball version of Dots with a look back at what happened to conclude the 2021 season. Today, we focus on the 14-17 Open champions at USAV Junior Nationals.

We wrote about Premier Nebraska 18 Gold’s 18 Open win at 18s Junior Nationals back in April, when Shannon Smolinski’s club surprised by taking the title despite adversity. You can re-live the remarkable achievement here — https://volleyballmag.com/premier-nebraska-wins-18s-042621/.

Norah Sis, who was named tournament MVP, went to Creighton, where she was named National Freshman of the Year by VolleyballMag.com. Another member of the team, Lindsay Krause, started on the right side for Nebraska, which made the NCAA Division I championship match.

• In 17 Open, Sunshine 17-LA steamrolled the field, going 11-0 with just one set dropped.

The result should have come as no surprise, as Sunshine was VolleyballMag.com’s No. 1 ranked team in its February rankings of clubs in this age division.

Here’s what we wrote at the time:

“Four cornerstones from last year’s Sunshine 17 Westside team that was pre-season No. 6 – OHs Elia Rubin and Dani Thomas-Nathan, RS Kerry Keefe and MB Lucia Scalamandre – team with four from last year’s Surfside 16 MB Legends team that was pre-season No. 11 – dynamic setter Kelly Bellardi, monster middle Kennedy Hill, libero Megan Verbiest and 6-1 outside Skylar Gerhardt. This team, coached by legendary Cari Klein, just HAD to be No. 1! They are that good and have backed it up by winning two Premier Volleyball League 17s dates.”

Sunshine opened as the No. 2 overall seed behind Houston Skyline 17 Royal, but never faced the Houston squad, which was upset by surprising WAVE 17 Rachel in the semifinals. Sunshine downed its SCVA rival, 25-9, 25-14, to complete its championship run.

“The team was totally focused and determined to win,” Klein said. “The only option for them was Gold.  They would have been devastated with Silver even.”

Klein noted that with Los Angeles County on Covid lock down, preventing high school sports from going forward in the fall of 2021, the team started practicing in August and went at it hard, practicing 5-6 days per week.

Sunshine participated in three qualifiers and at the modified Triple Crown in May, where they finished sixth, losing only to eventual AAU 17 Open champion OT 17 T Jason, 27-25, 29-27, in a Challenge match.

“We realized at Triple Crown that we needed to improved even more and fast so we started to chance things and speed things up,” Klein said.

The first day at Junior Nationals, playing A5 Mizuno 17-Jing, Klein said the coaches knew Sunshine 17-LA was ready to roll.

“There was one game of the match where the three coaches looked at each other and said, “Wow! We looked really good just now…”

By the fourth day – winning day – Sunshine was rolling. The team won its three bracket matches by an average score of 25-15, 25-14.

OH Elia Rubin (profiled here last week as the VolleyballMag.com National HS Player of the Year) was named tournament MVP. The Stanford-bound attacker did everything well for her team. RS Kerry Keefe and setter Kelly Belardi joined Rubin on the All-Tournament Team. All three would lead Marymount HS of Los Angeles to an undefeated 2021 fall campaign and state and national championships.

Klein also gave props to middles Lucia Scalamandre and Kennedy Hill, whose terrific blocking made it easy for everyone around them.

Sunshine 18-LA returns all key pieces from the 17 Open championship team, including outsides Dani Thomas-Nathan and Skylar Gerhardt and the sensational back row of Megan Verbiest and Ellie Geoghegan. Missing players, Sunshine recently dropped its first match of the season in Premier Volleyball League play, but should be heavy favorites to repeat as national champions.

• TAV 16 Black was not expected to be a national championship threat in 2021. A club powerhouse with overwhelming height and sleek athletes in most years at this age level, TAV coaches told us that this 16s version was not an “airport team,” the kind of squad that intimidates just by walking into a gym together. Still, 16 Black put a season together that took it from No. 19 in the rankings back in early March to the seventh seed overall come Junior Nationals.

Then TAV 16 Black did the unexpected: the team match Sunshine 17-LA by going 11-0 with just one set dropped. The team beat tournament favorite Drive Nation 16 Red, a Dallas-area rival, 25-22, 25-22, in the championship match.

LJ Sariego, a coaching fixture at TAV, said the key for TAV that week was consistent and high-level play throughout the tournament’s four days.

“That is very rare at Nationals,” he added.

The team had a pretty clean run to the championship match. It had a close Game 1 with WAVE 16 Alfee in pool play after already clinching advancement but that was it for stressful situations until the first match of its second pool, when it lost the first set to Rockwood Thunder 16 Elite before recovering.  TAV took out Aspire 16 US-Premier and MAVS KC 16-1 in bracket play on the final day before edging Drive Nation, coached by former TAV coach Jason Nicholson, for the title.

OH Kyndal Stowers was named MVP. Fellow outside Emily Simmons, middles Kate Hansen and Hannah Pfiffner and liberos Zoe Winford and McKenna Gildon also were outstanding over four days, with Sariego noting that Winford and Gildon were “crazy defensively.”

• We LOVED Dynasty 15 Black in the spring and ranked the Kansas City team No. 2 nationally in March, behind only powerful A5 15 Bob. Here’s what we wrote about Brian Tate’s team back then:

“Imagine a team that won Triple Crown at 14s and year ago and adds a First Team All-State outside who happens to be one of the top five recruits nationally in the Class of 2024. That’s Dynasty 15 Black. Skyler Pierce, who touches 10-3, comes over from MAVS and can dominate matches. She and 6-0 OH Carlie Cisneros, who showed her stuff by making All-State in Missouri, give coach Brian Tate a pair of outsides like no other team in this age division. Another dominant pin, 6-2 RS Abigail Mullen, plus libero Ryan McAleer and a host of others, have Dynasty thinking that a podium finish at Junior Nationals is their…what’s the word for it? Birthright? No. Fate? No. I know…dynasty!”

Dynasty’s season had some bumps in it. With KC Power 15-1 in the same town, there were stretches when Dynasty wasn’t even the best team in its own area! But when Dynasty was on its game, it was absolutely dominant and came to Junior Nationals as the No. 4 overall seed and a multiple national qualifier winner.

Dynasty went 11-0 over four days. It defeated the No. 1 seed, WAVE 15 Juliana, the No. 2 seed Madfrog 15’s National Green and the No. 5 seed, TAV 15 Black, before outlasting March No. 1 A5 in a three-set finale.

Tate said two things most impressed him about Dynasty’s championship push:

“First, The undefeated run.  It is so hard to go undefeated at a national qualifier, much less the national championships, as evidenced by every other team having multiple losses.  I was so proud of the consistency our players played with.  They took every team’s best shot, took it, made necessary adjustments in our three-set matches, and always found a way to come out on top.

Second, the overall contribution from everyone on the team all tournament.  Time and time again, we got great play from the six on the court no matter who it was.”

OH Carlie Cisneros was named tournament MVP. She and OH Skyler Pierce were dominant point scorers along with Abigail Mullen, who also made the All-Tournament Team. Pierce and Mullen also were blocking forces. The back row was in good hands with All-Tournament libero Ryan McAleer and Nela Misipeka, who came up with big play after big play all weekend.

Tate said that the championship match against A5 was insane, as the team had developed a rivalry with the Atlanta club through two previous hard-fought matches (one win each) during the spring.

“In Set 1, A5 played amazing and dominated us defensively,” Tate explained. “In Sets 2 and 3, we were able to make great defensive adjustments with our blocking against their outsides and our serve-receive improved considerably, allowing our offense to get going.”

Eight players have returned this year for Dynasty 16 Black, which started the season 10-0 in the Heart of America Power League.

• Fourth-seeded Arizona Storm 14 Thunder emerged as the 14 Open champion. Cari Bauer’s squad went 10-1 over four days, which included avenging its only tournament loss, to Milwaukee Sting 14 Gold, with a semifinal win; and downing tough TAV 14 Black in a two-set final.

Bauer knew that she had a special group, but Covid prevented the team from traveling until relatively late in the club season. Storm placed second at the Red Rock Rave and then won the Triple Crown NIT, which gave the players and coaches belief that they could go to Junior Nationals and compete for Gold.

“These 13 girls never got complacent,” Bauer said. “They were never done getting better. Every single day they came in to practices, training, and matches with the mindset that no one was going to outwork them. In the end, those are mentalities that win close matches.”

Six-rotation OH Teraya Sigler was a standout for Storm.

“She was most definitely the tournament MVP,” Bauer said.

Sigler gets a lot of attention for her extreme terminating ability front left, but her passing and back row attacking as well as her leadership were essential to the team’s title.

Sigler wasn’t the only Storm star.

“One of the things that makes this team so fun to watch is that we could come at teams with so many different weapons,” Bauer explained. “We had four very strong middles and were able to utilize them because we were in system a lot. I give our libero, Izzy Mahaffey, a lot of credit for that. She is a player that has a tremendous volleyball IQ and reads other teams’ offensives very well. Kaia Pixler, our setter, who not only ran the offense but had her own share of kills, also was a huge piece of our run. Being 5-11, she can bring tight passes back to our offense and was a continued offensive threat always.”

MB Raegan Richardson and OH Piper Rama also played exceptionally. Richardson hit for a high percentage and closed the block consistently. Rama’s passing was essential to the smooth functioning of the offense.

Bauer added that mentoring this group was very satisfying.

“I have coached at the college/high school/ and club level for about 30 years,” she explained.  “These girls are the whole package on and off the court.  They are each other’s biggest supporters.  They have each other’s back whether they are a starter or not.  Sometimes our own scrimmages/practices of 6s were our best/most competitive situations.  That screams volumes about these girls—all 13 of them!!  I also have to give a shout out to our assistant coaches Shoni Rama and Chris Pixler and the parent group.  It takes a village and these kids have been raised to always do what is right.  I appreciate their selfless support so much!”

• Mizuno Northern Lights 18-1 won the Northern Lights National Qualifier at 18 Open the weekend before last. It was a mild surprise because the team turned over half of its roster from last year’s 17-1 squad and then lost intense attacker Kaitlynn Peterson to a sprained thumb on her hitting hand on Day1. That forced head coach Dave Manka to switch from a 6-2 offense to a 5-2 midway through the second set of the first match, with Emma Berran running the offense from the front row and Abby Jandro controlling things from the back row.

“Needless to say, I was a bit nervous going into Set 2 with an offense that we as coaches talked about but we, as a team, never practiced,” Manka said. “The team responded like pros.”

The team finished off Day 1 with a 3-0 record, but got a wakeup call to start Day 2 as HJV 18 Elite took Lights behind the woodshed. With the next two matches essentially elimination matches, Manka’s team responded with two wins, including one over a Nebraska Premier 18 Gold team it would meet again for the title after both had previously qualified.

On the third day – winning day – the goal for Northern Lights, with two Gold pools of three teams each and FC Elite 18 Elite having qualified previously, was not to finish last in its pool. With libero Jayna Bredenberg getting it done defensively and offense led by Estelle Haugen and Dream Teamer Sienna Ifill on the right, Northern Lights won out, edging Nebraska Premier, 15-13 in the third, to win the title.

• Texas Pistols 18 Black won the 18 USA division at the Lone Star Qualifier this past weekend in Austin.

Head coach Janine Smith said that it was a total team effort and everyone contributed. 

Offensively, Meagan Lacy, Lily Bickley and Railey Druxman shined.

Defensively, Paige Mooney, Callie Humphrey, Tessa Gerwig and Emily Lewis kept the ball in system off of serve-receive and in play with great defense.

Setter Abby Folsom ran a consistent offense and kept her hitters in position to score points. 

Texas Pistols lost a close pool play match to AJV 18 adidas on Day 2, but still came out first. The team rolled on Day 3, defeating Woodlands Revolution 18 Premier in three sets in the championship match.

• Let’s finish this week’s Dots with a shout out to the boys!

SASVBC B 18-1, coached Rick Tune and Jayce Ashment, won the 18 Open division at the Southwest Boys Championships in Austin. The 17 Open champions at last year’s Boys’ Junior Nationals, the core group of this Spike and Serve has been together since they first started with the club as youngsters. The team is led by Pepperdine-bound Aidan Tune and UC Irvine signee Jacob Reilly and includes Teke Bower, Thomas Russell, Tyler Russell, Brighton Yap, Aaron Greene, Luke Ramirez, and Lai’akea Hirahara.

Thinking about Alexa Cruz and everyone at Venom Volleyball. Until next time … And once again, that link to the GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/nuca4x-medical-expenses-and-funeral-expenses

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John Tawa