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Volleyball club sharpens players' skills
By Ralph Pokorny
Nevada Daily Mail
About 50 girls from Nevada, El Dorado Springs, Rich Hill, Adrian and Fort Scott, Kan., are spending their Sunday afternoons in the Nevada High School gym this winter working to improve their volleyball skills with the Nevada Volleyball Club.
The 50 players are divided into six teams with at least one non-Nevada player on each team. This is the fourth year that Stephanie Becket, who is a former Nevada High School volleyball coach, has operated the program to provide an opportunity for area girls to gain extra experience without having to travel to Springfield, Holden or Pittsburgh, Kan. to find a club to play with.
Beckett said that she has three people helping with coaching duties this winter: Stephanie Licea, a Cottey College volleyball player; Ashley Carter, who played volleyball in high school and four years in college; and Pam Hammett, the mother of one of the players. "The more they touch the ball during the off season the better off they will be," Becket said. If Nevada's volleyball teams are going to stay competitive, they're going to have to play more, Beckett said.
Holden has had 10 and under teams for years and O'Hara has volleyball for third grade students, she said. Webb City, El Dorado Springs, McDonald County and Harrisonville, which all have good volleyball programs, also play during the off-season.
"You can't help but be good if you've been handling the ball since the third grade," she said. Beckett said that she see has seen improvements in the Nevada volleyball program since she started the volleyball club.
"I know of several cases where a girl who played on the seventh grade B team, played on the A team the next year due to club ball," she said. All because her skills continued to improve over the winter, she said.
Beckett said that their practices are a less intense than during the high school season and that the coaches try to make them fun.
"I love volleyball. The regular season is not enough for me," Lindsey Webb, a member of the Nevada freshman volleyball team, said. It helps me to compete and to get in shape for the regular season, she said.
Webb, who had wrist surgery at the start of this fall's volleyball season said that she hopes playing club ball this winter will also help to improve enough to gain a spot on the team next year.
"It helps to make you work really hard for what you want," she said. Brittany Chandler, a junior at Rich Hill High School, said that playing in the off-season has helped to improve her passing game. "It's fun and helps you have more experience for varsity," she said.
And then there is Katelyn Brier who plays on the Nevada High School softball team in the fall and plays volleyball during the winter for fun. Ashley Carter, who recently graduated from Ozark Christian College in Joplin and is one of the coaches, said that she thinks that seeing different players than you see during the regular season causes you to raise your level of play.
"It can only have a positive effect," she said. Carter, who played volleyball at Fort Scott High School, said that she did not play volleyball in the off-season because she played three sports.
In Kansas, schools play volleyball in the fall and softball in the spring. She said that she played volleyball for one season at Fort Scott Community College and for three years at Ozark Christian College. "I think the effect will continue to trickle down in the sport," she said. Becket said she plans to hold two and possibly four volleyball tournaments here in March and April.