Ratzlaff competes with USA Volleyball

Alex Ratzlaff, far left in the photo above, poses with the team she competed with in the USA High Performance Championships in Tulsa July 17-27. Ratzlaff was one of 22 girls selected to compete on USA Volleyball?s Girls? Youth Continental Team. The program involved five days of training followed by five days of competition. Hillsboro High School junior Alex Ratzlaff was one of 22 girls nationwide to be invited to participate in the USA Girls? Youth Continen?tal Team program in Tulsa, Okla., July 17-27.

The 10-day volleyball program included five days of training with High Performance Pipeline Coaches, after which the group split into two teams of 11 to compete in the USA High Performance Championships.

?The whole thing is through USA Volleyball, and it?s what USA Volleyball uses as its pipeline to evaluate and promote athletes,? said Alex?s mother, Amy Ratzlaff. ?The top of the pipeline in USA is the Olympics, so it?s all that thread.

?USA Volleyball is kind of the elite volleyball governing body, and it?s really a neat program.?

Tryouts

Alex, a member of the Hillsboro-based club volleyball team Crossfire, tried out for the program while at a club tournament in Indiana this past spring.

?I don?t know how many girls try out,? Amy said. ?I think last year they had 3,500 girls try out for high performance, so it?s thousands and thousands.

?At Alex?s tryout, there were probably 300 girls trying out at that one place.?

The tryout involved various types of testing, such as vertical jump, quickness and serving, as well as drills and six-on-six volleyball.

?You?re basically just fighting for attention the whole time,? Alex said. ?You have to be super loud and let them know that you?re there. You have to do well so they can see you and so you can stand out.?

Alex had three hours to prove she deserved a spot with the USA Volleyball program for her age group.

Ratz?laff prepares to serve during competition.?It was really hard to know how you do because you don?t get a lot of feedback, and there are hundreds of girls there,? Amy said. ?We kind of walked out of there not really knowing if we would expect anything from it.?

Alex received word in May that she had been selected as one of 22 girls nationwide to play on the youth continental team in the USA High Performance Championships. She was also chosen to serve as an alternate for the A1 team.

The program

Alex made the trip to Tulsa July 17 to meet her teammates for the first time. She was the only one there from Kansas, and she had teammates from states such as New York, Illinois and California.

?It was crazy just because you have girls from all over,? she said. ?You?re coming from all different ways of playing. That?s what I love most about going other places?just learning what people think about things that I don?t know yet.?

Coaches trained with the group for five days.

?These 22 girls come in and practice for five days,? Amy said. ?It?s really cool because they practice with people affiliated with the Olympics.?

One of Alex?s coaches was Pati Rolf, who has served as line judge in an Olympic gold medal match and also coached three-time Olympic gold medalist Misty May-Treanor. Another coach, Doug Harbottle, also coached May-Treanor.

In all, five coaches worked with the continental team.

?These are all coaches in the USA program,? Amy said. ?What was neat about it is they took them through all the pre-game warm-up and therapy that the Olympic players go through.?

Following the five days of practice, the youth continental team was divided into two teams: Continental White, which was Alex?s team, and Continental Red.

The teams then competed against other regional USA teams in the USA High Performance Champion?ships for five days.

In the championships, Alex?s team swept pool play with a 7-0 record, and ended up finishing fourth in a field of 18 teams.

?It was incredible,? Amy said. ?I?ve never seen volleyball like it?unbelievable rallies, great offense.?

Alex said her team played well together.

?Our team happened to have a lot of chemistry together, so it was really cool just seeing how girls from all over can mesh and play together,? she said. ?It was a lot of fun.?

Evaluations

Throughout the 10-day experience, head coaches evaluated Alex and the rest of the players. They will recommend who will be invited to play on the continental team next year and who might get to move up to the next level of competition.

Alex will have to try out again next year. If invited back, she will have an opportunity to connect with many of the same people.

?The neat thing is, if you get into this pipeline, hopefully she would get invited back at the same level or a level higher,? Amy said. ?All the other kids are kind of in that same realm, too.?

To cover the cost of the high performance tournament, Alex is doing her own fundraising, including hosting a volleyball camp for young girls.

Amy encouraged other volleyball athletes to attend a high performance tryout and see what happens.

?Start trying out, see where it goes, try out again,? she said. ?Every time you try out, I?m sure your profile gets bigger. I would love to see other players want to do that.?

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