A quick glance at Ignacio Volleyball’s monthly calendar online at maxpreps.com shows that head coach Thad Cano wants the month of July to be as action-packed as possible prior to the upcoming season.
For example, the squad has already hit the Adams State University Team Camp in Alamosa, and this weekend the Volleycats are slated to attend the July 25-26 Fort Lewis College Team Camp – with a couple more events still in the near future before the first official day of practice on August 11.
In between the two aforementioned stops, IHS recently hosted their 2014 All-American Volleyball Skills Camp on the August 17, 18 and 19, featuring Sue Webber as the ‘senior’ guest instructor.
Working as Englewood-based Front Range Volleyball Club’s 16-Red coach and FRVBC’s collegiate-recruiting coordinator since January, she starred as a NCAA Division I right-side hitter for the University of Illinois, earning Honorable Mention All-Big 10 Conference her senior season after pacing the Illini in kills (322, giving her 871 for her career), digs (308) and aces (35).
After graduating in 2003 with a Business Administration degree, Webber played on the AVPNext and Extreme Volleyball Professionals sand circuits, as well as in Europe, and in ’13 suited up for Great Lakes Swing Away in the Premier Volleyball League – an indoor pro league of teams from among USA Volleyball’s forty sanctioned regional associations.
Mentoring at the collegiate level, she was of late an assistant at St. Louis University (NCAA Div. I, Atlantic 10 Conf.) during 2012 and ’13, after three years aiding Bourbonnais, Ill.-based NAIA Olivet Nazarene University – where she earned a Master of Teaching degree with an Economics emphasis.
Also coming to unlearn what she learned from a Division I playing career completed just this past year at Brigham Young University was Kimberli Boswell.
The six-foot-two middle/opposite, originally from Oregon with 6’4” sister Amy now a Cougar sophomore, was used sparingly during 2013, but BYU – featuring former 4A Longmont, Colo., star Tambre Haddock (now Nobles) and Third Team AVCA All-American Alexa Gray – still went 24-7.
That made Boswell part of a senior class which went 87-36 overall while the team transitioned out of the Mountain West and into the West Coast Conference, and which made consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament’s ‘Sweet 16.’
She also stood out in the classroom, being named a MWC Scholar Athlete (3.5+ grade-point average) as a freshman, and earning WCC Honor Roll – Silver (3.5-3.74) as a sophomore.
Ignacio’s first match in 2014 will be at 4A Kirtland (N.M.) Central on August 28, with a week then before an away match at 3A Monte Vista on September 4.
2A/1A San Juan Basin League battle then begins on the 6th at Ouray, before the ’Cats finally defend their home court on the 11th against Mancos during Homecoming Week. Ridgway then visits on Saturday, September 13, to wrap up the festivities.