Tokyo Olympics 2021

Daily Dots (March 5, 2021): Club or high school volleyball factoids, notions and ideas to impress your friends (or not)

• In today’s Dots, we discover club volleyball news through the power of Google! Let’s search “club volleyball” and see what comes up!

In Howard County, a Maryland volleyball hotbed, schools playing a COVID-shortened high school season this spring are trying to coexist with club ball. The Baltimore Sun article notes that over half the county schools have noted that they had at least one potential starter opt out, mostly to focus exclusively on playing club.

“The club schedule intentionally was set up where it starts over the winter and therefore doesn’t typically interfere with high school and college, but now with the change of seasons we are the ones infringing on them,” Atholton coach Larry Schofield told the paper. “It not only puts the kids in a tough spot, but also a lot of the coaches who coach both high school and club. There’s a lot of overlapping of practices and games.”

For players trying to honor both high school and club commitments, schools have the option to have varsity matches occur earlier in the day to accommodate evening club practices. And both high schools and clubs are trying to be mindful of burn out and wear and tear from too much volleyball, especially with high school matches scheduled for Mondays and Wednesdays. That doesn’t allow for much recovery time from weekend club events.

• With many big tournaments in Utah canceled by COVID, 435 Volleyball is hosting a twice-monthly Southern Utah Volleyball League for spikers in St. George, a city near the Arizona border but four hours from Salt Lake City.

The league gives local players a little bit of normalcy in their lives, Jenna Thorkelson told the St. George News.

• On Sunday, Priest River HS hosted the River City Invitational, the first USA Volleyball-sanctioned tournament of the season for club teams across North Idaho and parts of Eastern Washington. Meagan Mize, the Priest River head volleyball coach and founder of River City Volleyball, put it together and told the Bonner County Daily Bee that it was a big undertaking, but one Mize was willing to take on for the kids.

North Idaho teams usually travel to Spokane to play, but with Washington slower to allow club volleyball to get started than Idaho, something had to be done, Mize said, to save another season.

“It was really apparent that Washington really wasn’t going anywhere and I just felt the need to try and pull it off,” she told the paper.

 A number of teams from Washington made the trip across the border to play.

• Plans are advancing for a new facility that would house the Epic United Volleyball Club in Merrillville, Indiana, according to the Northwest Indiana Times. Epic has proposed constructing a 60,000-square-foot building that would have four basketball courts that can be converted to eight volleyball courts, Councilman Shawn Pettit said. The facility would offer athletic instruction and sports tournaments.

“It is a part of the overall plan for the town of Merrillville multipurpose recreational campus,” Merrillville Planning and Building Director Sheila Shine told the paper.

Merrillville currently owns the 3-acre parcel, but there is a purchase agreement in place to sell the land for about $86,000 to Epic.

• PrepVolleyball.com, the company I founded in 2003, has a new staff writer to replace recently-departed Sloane Green. Her name is either McKenna Reagan or McKenna Meagher, as the “About Me” article is a bit unclear. McKenna has Nebraska roots, a degree in journalism, played college volleyball and now coaches club. She could be good!

• The Gazette, a paper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, reports that a state audit revealed that Craig Pitcher, the highly successful former head volleyball coach at Iowa City High, did not pay over $50,000 in fees for using Iowa City Community School District facilities while operating an unaffiliated summer league from 2011 through 2018. Both the Old Capitol League and Little Hawk Volleyball Club used district facilities, equipment and a school logo. According to the paper, Pitcher told auditors no one approached him to discuss an approval process or the need to pay facility rent or provide insurance for the league.

• Purdue University middle blocker Taylor Trammell said she is thriving in the Big Ten because of the coaching and promotion she received while at Lexington United Volleyball Club from club director Chris Beerman. Beerman died in January at age 53 from COVID complications.

“I played for him for three years for coach Beerman,” Trammell told the Lafayette Journal & Courier. “He always wanted the best for me and looked out for me. He is 100 percent the reason I am here right now.”

• According to ABC-11 in Raleigh, the Mid-Atlantic Power League tournament downtown last weekend attracted more than 2,300 people in infused more than $2 million into the local economy.

• The BC Juniors, a Boulder City, Colorado, club team consisting of eighth and ninth graders, came in first place in a tournament last weekend according to the Boulder City Review.

The Nevada Volleyball Center Challenge was a 16-and-under tournament held at the Nevada Volleyball Complex in North Las Vegas from Feb. 27-28. The BC Juniors, coached by BCHS girls’ volleyball varsity head coach Chad Robinson, went 7-1 in the double elimination tournament.

“These girls played awesome the whole weekend,” he told the paper. “Most of them have played together since sixth grade, so they have good chemistry.”

• In the non-Google portion of the Dots, Craig Dyer, an assistant coach at Creighton University, posted this on Facebook yesterday:

“This was a first for me in almost 20 years as a Division 1 coach/recruiter. A 2022 athlete emails with her interest – I respond by saying that we are not recruiting her position. She replies thanking me and providing me the names of two of her teammates, stating that they are the reason her team is so good. What a considerate act from a great teammate!”

• Last Friday, I put out a call to club coaches to share stories about players on their team — not stars — who have most impressed them early in the season. Sue Dillon wrote in to tell me about Emma Grace Rhyne, a 15-year-old playing up on Dillon’s Lake Mary Volleyball Club 16 Elite Sue team in South Carolina.

“She is an amazing all-around athlete but it wasn’t always that way,” Dillion recounts. “She puts in SO much time outside of practice, both learning the sport and increasing her physical strength and abilities. She works out daily in her garage with her mother, doing cardio, plyometrics, agility and strength training.

“She was chosen as an OH for this season but had to play her first two tournaments in a spot that she wasn’t familiar with. She had to play MH in our first tournament and did it with a smile on her face and gave everything she had. She actually ended up being our tournament MVP, not because she was the better MH or had the most kills but because of how she carried herself and her work ethic and never say die attitude the whole weekend, even though she was completely outside her comfort zone as she had NEVER been trained as a MH. The very next tournament, our incredible lefty RS hitter was out for Covid, and she stepped right in and played RS like a boss!

“Words cannot describe the growth this girl has shown in the four years that I have coached her. She was always an awkward athlete until this season. She has really grown into her own and concentrates every day at being better  On top of all of this she is an amazing student, extremely coachable and adored by her teammates. She is honestly one of the sweetest and most caring young ladies I have ever had the pleasure to work with.”

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Posted on 03/05/2021

By: Hans Themistode

At this point, Ahmet Oner believes it doesn’t make any sense to even try.

Less than one week ago, the manager of super middleweight contender Avni Yildirim sat back with his jaw glued to the ground as he witnessed his man receive a one-sided beating at the hands of unified super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez.

The WBC-mandated title challenger was dominated in the first two rounds and dropped in the third. Rather than allow him to go out there to experience a continued beating, Oner pulled the plug on their contest, waving things off at the end of the third.

Shortly following the win, promoter Eddie Hearn announced that the next opponent for Alvarez (55-1-2, 37 KOs) was already signed, sealed and delivered in WBO titlist Billy Joe Saunders. Yet, in the opinion of Oner, it doesn’t matter who steps into the ring with the consensus best boxer in the world.

Simply put, Oner doesn’t believe he’ll be beaten anytime soon.

“Canelo is very strong,” said Oner to George Ebro. “Put in Jermall Charlo, Dirrell, Billy Joe Saunders. All of them will be defeated by Canelo. He is a monster. He will never lose to minor boxers. I don’t think anyone can beat him in the division.”

To Oner, there aren’t enough superlative words to describe Alvarez. In short, he is the baddest man on the planet. But while that phrase is apropos when describing the Mexican product, at one point in time, Mike Tyson proudly held that distinction.

The former undisputed heavyweight champion would often win his bouts before the bell rung by striking fear into his opponents. Those who did work up the courage to step into the ring with him were quickly escorted away in the back of an ambulance.

But, regardless of the damage he caused inside the ring, even at his scariest, Oner firmly believes that for as great as Tyson was in his heyday, even he would play second fiddle to Alvarez.

“There is only one Canelo. Avni fought on a big stage against Chris Eubank and lost, but not like against Canelo. He’s better than Mike Tyson, more solid. If he was bigger, he could even beat Anthony Joshua. Canelo is in a different league.”

Trends are gradually emerging in judo, even if there is still a long way to go to Tokyo and between now and the Games the level will rise further with each competition. What is certain is that after the long year of uncertainty that all countries have lived through, all have found their way back to the tatami and the athletes can once again express their potential.

There is still work to be done to be ready for the June World Championships in Budapest and in July, as we head to Tokyo for the Games.

In the category U57kg in Tashkent it was Tamaoki who finally went for gold, after she applied a shime-waza on Lien for ippon. Winner of her Grand Slam at home two weeks ago, Timna Nelson Levy is in good shape. Today she believed for a long time she’d be able to repeat her performance on Uzbek soil, but it was without taking into account the determination of Lien Chen-Ling (TPE), who during the golden score of the semi-final succeeded with a perfect sequence on the ground to nail the Israeli using an unstoppable sankaku-jime (triangle choke). Lien therefore qualified for the final and would face the Tamaoki Momo (JPN), winner of the Osaka Grand Slam in 2019.

In the first match for the bronze medal, we found another member of the Serbian delegation, an athlete making a showpiece of her endurance, Marica Perisic (SRB). There she faced Timna Nelson Levy (ISR). Half way to the end, the Israeli was leading by waza-ari from a superb counterattack. Initially it was announced as ippon and Nelson Levy had already celebrated, but as the score was downgraded, she had to re-concentrate and maybe that offered an opportunity to Perisic to score on the edge, also a waza-ari. Taking the momentum over her opponent, the Serbian kept it to win with a second waza-ari from the shoulder throw.

For the last bronze medal of day 1 in Tashkent, Kim Jisu (KOR) met Theresa Stoll (GER), who failed at the foot of the podium just two weeks ago in Tel Aviv. This time the German concluded in a perfect manner, with an effective combination on the floor and an ippon win.