Geoff Carlston's Mid-American Conference Championship squad is not the only successful volleyball team on campus.
The club volleyball team at Ohio recently finished a successful season that ended with a tie for ninth place out of 60 teams at Nationals earlier this quarter.
Women's club volleyball is composed of two teams, an A team and a B team. Each team has 10 members. Tryouts for the team occur in the fall and club volleyball president Traci Leone says about 10 to 15 girls get cut. The team plays five tournaments a year, playing five or six games in each tournament.
Leone is also an outside hitter who took an unusual path to becoming president.
I took off a year
freshman year. I hated volleyball and I said I would never play this sport again Leone said. And then after a year or so I e-mailed the president of the club last year and she told me when tryouts were.
Janice Mataccic and Abby Dressler both played volleyball in high school but did not want to continue at the college level.
I decided against playing somewhere in college and so I couldn't give up the sport so I had to play
Mataccic said. I figured I have to play club because intramurals aren't competitive enough.
Leone said this year's team was an all-star squad.
We have a really talented group of girls and every one of us could've played somewhere in college.
Dressler said that is a common theme among the teams they play.
As you go to tournaments you find that all the teams are very
very good and all those people could play on varsity
they just chose not to
Dressler said. The competition level's very high.
The players have to drive themselves to the tournaments. Leone said she is given a budget at the beginning of the season, but fund raising is necessary to be able to travel to all the tournaments. Some of the places the team traveled to were Purdue, Ohio State, Kentucky, Dayton and Bowling Green.
The highlight of the season comes when the team travels to Nationals, which was in Kansas City this season. The players said there are multiple reasons as to why the event is enjoyable.
Regular tournaments you go on Friday nights
you sleep
play volleyball all day and leave
Leone said. Here
we left on Tuesday and we play Thursday
