COACH AND PLAYER: The fire Cilene Drewnick brought to the game as a player for the Brazilian Women’s National Team is now displayed on the sidelines as coach with the Instinct Volleyball Club of Dallas.


college scholarships through Instinct. Kierra Holst (Coppell, Texas) is bound for the University of Oklahoma on a full volleyball scholarship in the fall of 2012. She played on the 17s team that won the national title. But at 6-5 she was not type-cast as a one-dimen- sional net player.


“The thing about Cilene that makes her


different is that she makes you play every part of the game,” Holst says. “With her she makes you try to play every position. I played middle and right side and this upcom- ing season she is thinking about making me a left side.”


Holst says the team has fun with Drewnick’s Brazil- ian accent and fire in practice. “She really emphasizes Brazilian technique, which is all about effort. You never let a ball hit the ground when she’s in the gym. I have never played for a coach like her before.” Emily Hardesty,


GOOD TIMES: The Instinct 17s from Dal- las celebrated often at the USA Volleyball Girls’ Junior National Championships.


who coached at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (Bernardo Rezende with Brazil men; Marco Bonitta with Poland women; Giovanni Caprara with Russian women; and Jose Roberto Lages Guimaraes with Brazil women).


Former coaches say her intensity and passion were elevated even for a Brazilian player. Brazil Junior National Team Coach Luis Omar called her play contagious. She has infected her club players with the same enthusiasm, many who are earning


ed States. Cilene was pregnant in 2001 and she gave birth to her daughter, Nicole, shortly after the couple settled in United States. “I just gave up the game and was a full-time mom,” she says. “I did that for five years and then my daughter was in kinder- garten and I was home with not much to do. I felt empty.”


“We are creating


After working with a few clubs in the area to get back in the game, Drewnick saw a void. “The training was not specific enough and not enough attention to the players as individuals,” she says. “I saw a need for bet- ter conditioning.” Eduardo, who still


discipline, commitment and respect in our players. We want them to leave this


club better people.” Cilene Drewnick Instinct Volleyball Club


who was named the most valuable player in Atlanta for the championship 17s team, says her coach instills a sense of urgency on the court. “She is an expert of the game and she coaches with so much intensity and passion that you would believe she is playing with us on the court,” Hardesty says.


Drewnick, 43, says one of the keys to the rapid success of Instinct is the individualized training. “We are changing how these kids think. They are going to school and eating differently and studying better,” she says. “That’s going to change their lives after vol- leyball.”


The opportunity to move for Drewnick to the U.S. came in 2001 when her husband, Eduardo, wanted to earn his MBA in the Unit-


maintains a full-time job as a vice-president for a Dal- las-based company, helps with the club as a coach. Cilene is a hands-on trainer of the 17s team.


“I have lived so many of these experiences in volleyball,” she says. “I hurt my ankle one month before the Olympics in Atlanta (1996) and was not able to be on the team for


Brazil. So when my players get sad about something, I tell them it’s nothing. You have to have lived to teach and share your own experiences.”


Instinct is unique in that it has a sports nutritionist on staff and has implemented a mini-volleyball program borrowing from the methodology Brazilian clubs have been using for more than 15 years. They play with a lighter ball and smaller court. Drewnick’s daughter Nicole, now 10, is immersed in the program.


The junior climate in Texas is competi- tive with top clubs vying for the area’s top players. “There are some people not happy I’m around because I am very competitive,” she says. “But I like the challenge.”


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