PHOTO: PETER BROUILLET
ONE ON ONE
tarting about 20 years ago, Alisha Glass spent a lot of afternoons bounc- ing around the gym where her mother, Laurie Glass, coached high school volleyball. Every chance she got, Alisha grabbed a ball and practiced.
“From the day I started walking and talking, I was trying to play,” she says. “I would try to get the girls on my mom’s team to pepper with me on their drink breaks, and I didn’t really understand why they didn’t want to.” Ten years later, she was one of those girls on her mom’s high school team, fi rst as a middle blocker and then as an outside hitter. From there, she went to Penn State as a hitter/setter and was soon given the keys to the offense; she set the Nittany Lions to three consecutive NCAA titles, including an unde- feated season when she was a senior in 2009. Next stop, the U.S. National Team. Last
year, the 5-11 Glass was chosen as the Best Set- ter at FIVB World Grand Prix, where the U.S. Women won the fi rst of two consecutive gold
24 | VOLLEYBALLUSA
Briana and Alisha S
A volleyball chat between two setters: a 14-year-old
high school freshman from Laguna Beach, Calif. and a 23-year-old U.S. Women’s National Team player from Leland, Mich.
medals in that tournament. Glass is a virtual lock to be on next summer’s Olympic team. Briana Boyd is just getting rolling in her volleyball career. Like Alisha, she started early, hanging around the beach as a little kid while her parents, Pam and Rod, played ball. Her offi cial start to the indoor game came in fi fth grade, and the 5-8 freshman is now the starting junior varsity setter at Laguna Beach High. Over the summer, she was a member of the beach volleyball Future Select USA Volleyball High Performance Team. On a recent weeknight, after both players had completed their day’s training, we got Briana and Alisha together for an interview. Briana came prepared with a long list of questions, and they were good questions. And Alisha did her part, offering good insights on what it takes to get the most out of your vol- leyball career as a promising junior.
Briana: What goals did you set for yourself as a young volleyball player?
Alisha: I had a lot of different goals. Some were long-term. I wanted to someday
play in the Olympics, and I wanted to play in college, Division I. My ultimate goal was to get a scholarship to reward my mom for the amount of money she had put into my career. At the high school level, I wanted my high school and club teams to be successful.
At what point in your volleyball career did you know you wanted to play for the National Team and in the Olympics?
I think the Olympics become a young
kid’s dream. It’s something you get to watch on TV, different sports and different events, and it just looks like something you want to be a part of. I didn’t necessarily know how that dream could be accomplished, but it was something that I dreamt about from a very young age.
What one or two things do you currently focus on in your training that are keys to your suc- cess?
One of the things I’m working on right now is having specifi c focuses and trying to remind myself of those focuses throughout practice. So I’ll set a goal and say, ‘Today, it’s
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