Kenzie Aries from San Dieguito in California has sent us details of her volleyball life and career. Volleyball Paradise appears to be located in South California, have a look at the following notes, pics, club, school and beach web site links. Kenzie is currently contacting colleges for a schollaship and has put together a portfolio, including a web site (career to date, match stats, private tutor sessions etc) and a promotional video, hopefully we can give her a bit more PR and I trust we will see her at London 2012.

Hi Dave, I also have my personal site (which is under construction) I am using this to contact colleges about volleyball scholarships www.Kenzilla.com School, we are the San Diego area high school team, with our own web page. www.RideThatPony.com We are 26-6 and are in the play-offs for the state of California. San Diego County has 2.7 million people and our team is ranked second in Division III and seventh overall in the county. Three of our losses came to teams ranked in the top-100 in the US.

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Our site has our own song, "I wish they all could be San Dieguito girls" (apologies to the Beach Boy's version - "I wish they all could be California girls") We have finished 2nd, 3rd and 5th in 30-44 team tournaments this year, last year, just in the southern California region, and just the age 16 group, there were 350+ teams competing in the volleyball league. And I have uploaded highlights from this summer when I played in the 2006 Junior Olympics, I was 15 then.

Club tryouts
1) The last two weeks have been club try outs as high school volleyball playoffs just finished (our school finished 9th in California for Division III - schools of 1,000 - 1,300 students). The high school season starts in August with two a day try-outs and through November. Club vball starts try outs in November, has practices in December and the season runs Jan to July 1.

2) Each club has multiple try out dates. Typically they run 2-3 hours and costs (one-time) $0 to $40 to be evaluated by the club coaches. Typically you go to 2-3 try outs per club. Monthly fees range from $300-$500/month, which includes tournament fees as well.

Here are pictures of a typical club "San Diego VC" www.sdvbc.org

3) Most of the club teams are essentially high school all star teams by age group. Most volleyball clubs have programs from 12 to 18 years old. Most of the club coaches are AVP players or high school coaches or former college players - at least here in Southern California. On my current 17's team our middle blockers are 6', 6'2" and 6'1", I am 6' setter, the OH are 6'0 and 5'10", our right side blockers are 5'10" and 6'0" This is a typical team for my age group.

4) Once you make a club you practice 2-3 times a week from 2-2.5 hours per session. I drive 40 minutes each way to make practice. there are clubs closer to my home (10 minutes, 20 minutes and 25 minutes, but I wanted to play with girls on this club across town) Mostly it is drills for the first 85% then scrimmage at the end. We have tournaments against other clubs about every 3 weeks, where we play at least 3 matches of best of 3 per tournament. We usually start at 8 am on Saturday and play until about 2-3 pm.

5) At year end most California clubs go to the Reno volleyball festival which has us playing 3-5 matches a day for 5 or 6 days straight. Last year there were over 1,000 teams there. We play by age group. Some clubs go to the Junior Olympics.

My team made that last year. Essentially for the Junior Olympics you go to qualifying tournaments and the top 2 teams get invited to the Junior Olympics. Typically there are 50-120 teams that think they are good enough to win that qualifier. Teams that aren't as good generally don't go to the qualifier due to costs.

The top 50 teams from all the regional US qualifiers from each age group advance and play each other. My team was ranked 39th going in and we finished 18th in the Junior Olympics. The main difference between the Junior Olympics is that you have to qualify and be invited where in the volleyball Festival anyone goes and you keep moving up as long as you keep winning. At both events there are college coaches everywhere.

When I don't get enough volleyball I can go to the beach, I live a few blocks from a local beach volleyball court, Moonlight Beach in Encinitas, www.beacons-beach.com www.desertbreezes.com/beach.jpg the 3 courts are just to the right of the palm tree. Or the local YMCA has open courts at least once a week, and many of the clubs have open gym for $5 once a week.

thanks much!
Kenzie

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