Tweet
This is from an article I stumbled across when looking through VT. Imagine my shock when I found it talking about Chris!
The article is by the stepdad of the coach at Tennessee. She played her D-I volleyball at North Carolina. Tennesse and North Carolina met this past weekend in the NCAA Tournament.
Twenty-nine years ago, I took my then 11-year-old stepdaughter to play in her first club tournament with a 14s team. One of the older players wasn’t available, so Eve played the whole day, and the team won all of its matches. Little did we know, it was a lower-division league tournament. ...
Not long after, I had a conversation with Chris Lamb, the club’s director who has now just finished his 22nd year as the coach at Wichita State. He told me that he was sure that if she kept working, Eve could get a scholarship. Eve was big for her age, but not huge, and she was well coordinated but never explosive, so I found this bit of news exciting but also surprising.
Lamb told me that there was something about her instincts and the way she saw the court, but also her will to compete. He thought she had a future as a setter. Weirdly, in seven years of club and four years of high school, she was never her team’s primary setter: Her teams had other smaller girls who could set, but who couldn’t play on the pins. Interestingly, her real power was as a reliable passer in serve-receive, something setters never have to do.
Eve’s first shot as a full-time setter was her freshman year of college. Lamb has become one of the kings of out-of-the-box techniques and unconventional development strategies and one of the sport’s truly original thinkers. Looking back, Eve’s preparation for four years as a college setter turned out to be even better preparation for coaching.
In another prescient moment, Bear Grassl, her club and high-school coach and now the longtime coach at Division II Sonoma State, told me when Eve was a high-school sophomore that she was born to be a volleyball coach and destined to be really good at it because she could often see things on the court before he did.
Eve still maintains a close professional relationship with Lamb. Should Tennessee and Wichita State meet someday in the NCAA Tournament, I suspect it’ll be just as, if not more, emotional than this match with UNC.
So there you have it.
The article is by the stepdad of the coach at Tennessee. She played her D-I volleyball at North Carolina. Tennesse and North Carolina met this past weekend in the NCAA Tournament.
Twenty-nine years ago, I took my then 11-year-old stepdaughter to play in her first club tournament with a 14s team. One of the older players wasn’t available, so Eve played the whole day, and the team won all of its matches. Little did we know, it was a lower-division league tournament. ...
Not long after, I had a conversation with Chris Lamb, the club’s director who has now just finished his 22nd year as the coach at Wichita State. He told me that he was sure that if she kept working, Eve could get a scholarship. Eve was big for her age, but not huge, and she was well coordinated but never explosive, so I found this bit of news exciting but also surprising.
Lamb told me that there was something about her instincts and the way she saw the court, but also her will to compete. He thought she had a future as a setter. Weirdly, in seven years of club and four years of high school, she was never her team’s primary setter: Her teams had other smaller girls who could set, but who couldn’t play on the pins. Interestingly, her real power was as a reliable passer in serve-receive, something setters never have to do.
Eve’s first shot as a full-time setter was her freshman year of college. Lamb has become one of the kings of out-of-the-box techniques and unconventional development strategies and one of the sport’s truly original thinkers. Looking back, Eve’s preparation for four years as a college setter turned out to be even better preparation for coaching.
In another prescient moment, Bear Grassl, her club and high-school coach and now the longtime coach at Division II Sonoma State, told me when Eve was a high-school sophomore that she was born to be a volleyball coach and destined to be really good at it because she could often see things on the court before he did.
Eve still maintains a close professional relationship with Lamb. Should Tennessee and Wichita State meet someday in the NCAA Tournament, I suspect it’ll be just as, if not more, emotional than this match with UNC.
So there you have it.
Comment