Tournament Cancelled

Premier Volleyball Club qualified their 13-18s teams to either Phoenix or Atlanta this year, carrying on the tradition of success. Opting not to send teams to the Phoenix Invite due to cost, we did, however send our two top teams, 16-1 and 17-1, to Atlanta for the USA Girls' National Tournament. Premier had a great year with these two teams, both of them winning many tournaments throughout the season with the highlight being sweeping the Best of America tournament in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Both teams finished well in Orlando, Florida, the week prior, giving them confidence to compete at nationals against some of the same teams.

In Atlanta, both teams knew they had to do well on the first day to even try and get to the coveted top of the pack. They both did so, winning their pools and advancing to the top 32 teams. 17-1 played a great match against Dunes 17s, winning it by two points in the 3rd game. Both teams showed up to play the second day with 16-1 coming out of their pool 2-1, advancing them to the final 16. 17-1, however, had a rough task in front of them, getting a tough pool of Sky High, Munciana, and Golden Bear all in one pool. Playing some of their best volleyball yet this year, the team lost a heartbreaking tiebreaker at almost midnight in the gym, putting them in position not to advance to the upper bracket. The heart had definitely been taken out of this team at that very moment. Emily Zulauf, one of the top players on the team, experienced some back trouble and had to be pulled from the game, and the team could not come back to win. The next day, 16-1 tried to take care of business, but fell to 1-2 in their pool by two points in the third game twice in the pool. This still left 16-1 in position to finish in 9th place, but they fell short on the last day when your body does not have much more to give, finishing 13th. 17-1 had no heart on the last day, losing early, and wanting to just come home to Ohio. 17-1 definitely got their volleyball in while they were there, playing every match to 3 games the entire tournament. We are very proud of the girls on both teams and their families for having such a great tournament and playing the best teams in the country. We look forward to hopefully sending more teams to Texas next year!

This was a great year for Premier in many ways. We opened our own Academy with many new programs, added lots of new faces to our club, and took some new kids on the National scene with us to hopefully train for the future. We sent away 12 seniors to play collegiately this fall and have 6 players verbally committed for 2004. We had three players join the OVR HP team this summer, and they had a great time in Utah!

Nick Nystrom (nystrom@ovr.org; posted 2003-08-05 19:49:50)