VOLLEYBALL HISTORY
Where are they now?
Tara Cross-Battle is still in the game — and also the Hall of Fame
T
ara Cross-Battle’s fondest memories from her international volleyball career aren’t necessarily of all the good things she did on the court. What makes her smile most is the fun she had with her teammates. Like the time she chased teammate Stacy Sykora around the gym in an attempt to give the longtime USA libero a sweaty hug after a hot mid-summer practice in Puerto Rico. “She doesn’t like sweaty people touching her, and I was just messing with her,” Cross-Battle says. “She was literally running away from me saying, ‘Tara, stop it. I’m serious. That’s disgusting!’ It was funny to me, but she was dead serious.” If the light moments were her favorites, the on-court accomplishments had to be a close second. This is a player who, for nearly two decades during a career as an outside hitter that took her to four Olympics, was both the steadiest of passers and the steadiest of teammates. “Tara is the most consistent player at a high level that I’ve ever coached,” says Or- egon State Women’s Coach Terry Liskevych, who coached three U.S. Olympic teams, in- cluding the bronze-medal winner at Barcelona in 1992 on which Cross-Battle was a starter. “She was the same every day in practice and in matches, someone who you could always hang your hat on. She has a great disposition, is a great team player, and she had a multiple skill set. She was a great passer, a great hitter, good blocker, good defender. She did every- thing well.”
Before joining the national team in 1990, Cross-Battle rose to the peak of college volleyball, leading Long Beach State to the NCAA championship in 1989 and winning consecutive national Player of the Year awards in 1988 and 1989. As part of the National Team, she won bronze at the 1992 Olympic Games and was MVP of the 1995 U.S. team that earned gold at the FIVB World Grand Prix that year. She was also team captain at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
Now 46, Cross-Battle lives in Houston with her husband, Spencer, her 9-year-old
daughter, Lauren, and her six-year-old son, Marcus. All of them, as well as her mother, were on hand in Holyoke, Mass., on October 18 when Tara was inducted into the Vol- leyball Hall of Fame. Notifi cation that she would join the elite group of players in the Hall arrived via email
over the summer, and at fi rst glance, Cross-Battle didn’t quite believe what she was seeing. “It said, ‘Congratulations,’ and I saw the emblem for the Hall of Fame. I think I read the email twice and thought, ‘Is this for real?’ I actually got up and took my laptop in to the other room where Spencer was and I told him, ‘Read this,’ just to make sure I wasn’t reading more into it than what it was. And he had this nonchalant attitude and said, ‘And you’re surprised because?’”
Since retiring from playing, Cross-Battle has stayed in the game through coaching.
AT HOME IN HOUSTON: Tara Cross-Battle enjoys spending time with her two biggest fans — son Marcus, left, and daughter Lauren.
Currently, she’s part owner of a facility in Houston called FAST (Fundamental Athletic Sports Training), one of the head training coaches of the Houston Juniors Volleyball Club and its camp director. She also is head coach of the 16-elite team. In short, she’s busy – but not too busy to pepper with Lauren, who just recently started playing volleyball. From her vantage point as a coach, Cross-Battle often wonders if the work ethic that pushed her and many of her former teammates to the top is less common now than when she was a junior player. “We have some of the best volleyball players in the city of Houston, but I don’t see a lot of that drive anymore,” she says. “I’m not sure if that’s because there’s more instant gratifi cation and things like no-cut policies in school. It seems like a lot of them are into titles. If you’re a parent and your kid doesn’t make the top team but makes the second or third team, it’s, ‘OK, we’re going somewhere else.’ We’re not teaching kids to bust their butts and prove people wrong.” Another thing she’d like to see more of in young players is a sense of history. When she was a
junior, she looked up to players like Rita Crockett and Flo Hyman and Debbie Green. “These days, I’ll ask players if they know who Logan Tom is, and a lot of them don’t,” she says. “They should. Kids today should know who Logan Tom is. I don’t expect them to know who I am, but if you don’t know who Logan Tom is, that’s crazy to me.”
68 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at
usavolleyball.org/mag — Don Patterson
PHOTOS: CROSS-BATTLE FAMILY, PETER BROUILLET
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