COLLEGIATE SAND
age: a Christian school in sunny Malibu, Calif., with a beach vol- leyball program and family ties – her brother, Chase, is currently a senior at Pepperdine and plays outside hitter for the Waves’ men’s team.
“I talked to my brother a lot, and he was all for me coming to Pepperdine,” Ross says. “I love seeing him around campus. I see him every day.”
Before she even played in a sand match for Pepperdine, Ross already had impressive beach credentials. Along with the 2010 FIVB Beach Volleyball Women’s Junior World Cham- pionship title, she also won the 2010 FIVB Beach Volleyball Youth World Championship (U- 19) with Jane Croson, and that earned Ross USA Volleyball’s 2010 Beach Female Athlete of the Year award.
After she made several starts
on the AVP Tour while she was in high school, veteran beach players commented that she was already top-10 material, and that was reinforced when she teamed with Petia Yanchulova to push two-time gold medalist Misty May-Treanor and Nicole Branagh to three games before losing 15-13 in the third at an AVP stop in Virginia Beach the summer of 2010. What makes Ross such a handful for op- ponents? Lamberson says it’s not necessar- ily what you might think at fi rst glance. “When people see Summer play, they’re surprised,” Lamberson says. “She’s tall, with long arms and long legs, so they think she’s going to be this dominant net player, and that’s not really her game. She’s a good net player, but her game is about consisten- cy. She pulls off the block and digs at a level that only some top pros do. She’s so smooth, and she’s also a very consistent setter. She’s consistent with all her skills.”
The Hornacek standard
f Abby Hornacek ever needs extra motivation, and that’s unlikely consider- ing that motivation is clearly hardwired into her DNA, she can always ask her mom, Stacy, about her dad’s cold-weather basket- ball shooting sessions as a kid. “It’s an awesome story,” Abby says. “He grew up in Chicago, and when all the kids would stay inside on a snow day, he would go out in the zero-degree weather and shoot
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never hard to fi nd. Abby plays one-on-one hoops whenever she can with her dad, who’s now an assistant coach for the Utah Jazz. (Of one of their recent battles, she said: “We might not have kept score, but I think I won.”) Growing up, she scrapped in all sports with her older brothers – Ryan, now 23, and Tyler, who’s 21 and cur- rently a setter on the USC men’s volleyball team. Wiffl e ball, pool basketball, football – anything you can imagine, the Hornaceks played it.
“They didn’t take it easy on me, and that defi nitely made me tougher,” Abby says.
In case you’re wondering,
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA BOUND: Arizona native Abby Hornacek focused on the sand early in her playing career and is excited to be part of the Trojans’ beach future. (Photo: Peter Brouillet).
hoops. And he would bring a bucket of warm water for his hands because his hands would freeze. I admire that so much.” It paid off in a big way for Jeff, who went on to play 14 seasons as a guard in the NBA from 1986 to 2000, and it appears to have rubbed off on Abby, who is equally devoted to keeping herself in top shape. Her routine includes speed work that involves sprinting while pulling a sled, daily ladder exercises, impromptu footwork drills any time she walks on the square tiles of the hallway in her family’s home, squats against the wall when she brushes her teeth and early wakeups to do abdominal exercises before school.
Considering all of that, it’s not surprising that Hornacek already has a bulky volleyball resume highlighted by Arizona All-State fi rst-team honors that came after she played a key role in helping Xavier to two of its state volleyball championships – and she did it as a right-side hitter even though she’s a setter on her club team. Along the way, she has earned plenty of academic honors, and this spring she is participating in the state’s fi rst season of high school sand volleyball. Competition in the Hornacek family is
yes, Abby played hoops, and she liked it just fi ne, but she decided that volleyball was her sport. The decision may have been just a little easier after she returned home from one basketball game, saw teeth marks on her arm and realized that she’d been bitten by a player who was trying to deter her from driving the lane. “I think she thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Jeff says. Volleyball welcomed her with open arms, as did Uni- versity of Southern California
Sand Coach Anna Collier, who has coached Hornacek at USA Volleyball’s High Perfor- mance beach camps. Collier likes the fact that the 5-11 native of Paradise Valley, Ariz., chose to concentrate on beach – “So many girls go back and forth and have a diffi cult time making that decision,” Collier says – and she also likes that Hornacek has gone above and beyond to get in top beach shape. To Collier, Hornacek is “the ideal” beach volleyball player. “She has great reach, is long and lean, can move well in the sand and is a great blocker,” Collier says. “And she also has a lot of ball control. Not all players who come to the sand from indoor take to it as quickly as she has.”
Playing with the big girls
t’s often said that to get really, really good at a sport, it helps if you compete against older players, and Sara Hughes (Costa Mesa, Calif.) has spent most of her life doing just that. Now a junior at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif., Hughes got her fi rst taste of sand training at Hunting- ton Beach in California when she was
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