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The start was hardly ideal. But the way her team finished left Amy Benne beaming.
The Invasion 12 Black volleyball team competed in the USA Volleyball Girls Junior National Championship tournament from June 28 to July 1 in Atlanta and returned with a 10th-place finish despite dropping a pair of matches on the tournament’s opening day.
The squad entered with the No. 1 seed and held aspirations of ending in the top five. But 30 unforced errors in the team’s first match quickly derailed those hopes.
“It was a rough start to the day,” Benne said. “They’re only sixth graders, so it can be a roller coaster sometimes.”
But after shaking some early jitters, the group recovered to finish with a 12-8 set record in the tournament and scored an emotional decision over a club from Olathe to advance to the tourney’s silver bracket.
“I thought we did pretty good,” said Genna Berg, a Blue Springs resident who attends Moreland Ridge Middle School. “We were real nervous at first and then the last couple days we started doing a lot better. ... The slow start did not feel good at all, but then we started winning and I was getting pretty happy.”
The team also included six other students from the Blue Springs School District. Sydney Sinclair also attends Moreland Ridge, Kyla Higginbotham attends Brittany Hill Middle School and Paige Reiter, Camryn Gregston, Courtney Foudree and Lily Buckley all go to Delta Woods Middle School. The team also includes Paige Johnson of Harrisonville and Shannon Peters of Waverly, Mo., who attends St. Paul’s Lutheran in Concordia.
Benne added that she thought her team overcame several obvious physical disadvantages. She estimated that squads from Nebraska, Indiana and St. Louis were on average 6 inches taller than her girls. She said her players offset their lack of size with swift passing, sturdy defense and solid serving.
“They dug deep and fought back,” Benne said. “… They picked it up and really had a lot more fun after that first day. They’re a great group, a positive group and they’re a lot of fun to be around.”
The start was hardly ideal. But the way her team finished left Amy Benne beaming.
The Invasion 12 Black volleyball team competed in the USA Volleyball Girls Junior National Championship tournament from June 28 to July 1 in Atlanta and returned with a 10th-place finish despite dropping a pair of matches on the tournament’s opening day.
The squad entered with the No. 1 seed and held aspirations of ending in the top five. But 30 unforced errors in the team’s first match quickly derailed those hopes.
“It was a rough start to the day,” Benne said. “They’re only sixth graders, so it can be a roller coaster sometimes.”
But after shaking some early jitters, the group recovered to finish with a 12-8 set record in the tournament and scored an emotional decision over a club from Olathe to advance to the tourney’s silver bracket.
“I thought we did pretty good,” said Genna Berg, a Blue Springs resident who attends Moreland Ridge Middle School. “We were real nervous at first and then the last couple days we started doing a lot better. ... The slow start did not feel good at all, but then we started winning and I was getting pretty happy.”
The team also included six other students from the Blue Springs School District. Sydney Sinclair also attends Moreland Ridge, Kyla Higginbotham attends Brittany Hill Middle School and Paige Reiter, Camryn Gregston, Courtney Foudree and Lily Buckley all go to Delta Woods Middle School. The team also includes Paige Johnson of Harrisonville and Shannon Peters of Waverly, Mo., who attends St. Paul’s Lutheran in Concordia.
Benne added that she thought her team overcame several obvious physical disadvantages. She estimated that squads from Nebraska, Indiana and St. Louis were on average 6 inches taller than her girls. She said her players offset their lack of size with swift passing, sturdy defense and solid serving.
“They dug deep and fought back,” Benne said. “… They picked it up and really had a lot more fun after that first day. They’re a great group, a positive group and they’re a lot of fun to be around.”
