State College - Centre Daily Times
http://www.centredaily.com/
July 22, 2012
Megan Hodge attacks during the U.S. Women's National Volleyball Team's five-set victory over Brazil to open the FIVB World Grand Prix Final Round (FIVB)
Each Olympiad, a handful of former Penn State athletes get to live out that dream.
Ex-Nittany Lions in track and field, gymnastics, fencing, soccer and even cycling and rowing will be competing at the Summer Games when they kick off next weekend in London, and over the decades so many other sports have had their representatives like wrestling and field hockey.
For the first time, despite a storied history on the NCAA level, volleyball can be added to the list.
Three former Nittany Lions — Christa Harmotto, Megan Hodge and Anderson — will be in red, white and blue, showing off their games honed from toiling endlessly in Rec Hall.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet and I don’t think it will until probably the opening ceremonies,” Hodge said. “There are random moments where I’m like, ‘Wow, I’m going to London.’ (Wednesday) night after our scrimmage was over, it kind of became real. We’re leaving in two days for the Olympics. It’s little moments like that.”
The trio joined their teammates in flying to London, the men left on Thursday and the women on Friday, as they prepare for a run at gold medals. Both genders have 12-team fields, with two pools of six each, for the first week-plus of matches before the top eight head to the medal rounds. The women open Saturday against Korea while the men meet Serbia next Sunday.
“I don’t know exactly how I feel right now,” Anderson said. “It’s kind of surreal. We’ve been working on this for four years to get to this point. It’s finally here so there’s obviously a lot of excitement and angst to get out there and compete, but we have to take it one match at a time and focus on who’s first and that’s Serbia.”
A few more ex-Nittany Lions also are waiting in the wings: Alisha Glass and Nicole Fawcett were named alternates for the women’s team and Max Holt is an alternate for the men.
While they are eager to get to those first matches, they also are excited to get to the other benefits that come with being on the teams, like being among the 10,000 athletes who will be a part of the opening ceremonies Friday night.
“That’s the first thing you watch when the whole games start,” Harmotto said. “That will be a really cool moment during the 21/ 2 weeks. I’m looking forward to the competition, to competing. The whole thing in general sounds like it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to be representing something so much bigger than ourselves.”
While the men and women get the thrill of being there, there also will be plenty of happy onlookers in State College who played major roles in getting the trio to London. Penn State, Southern Cal and Long Beach State are the only schools to put representatives on both rosters.
“It’s a great milestone for the Penn State program and all the previous players that we’ve had,” Nittany Lion women’s coach Russ Rose said. “I’m sure that a lot of them look back on their national team experience and wish that they had been selected to that final selection of 12 players. I am looking forward to watching the matches.”
The men’s program has had a previous Olympian — Ramon Hernandez played beach volleyball for Puerto Rico four years ago — and Ellen Crandall had a chance to play in 1980, but the U.S. boycotted the summer games in Moscow.
“We get to know these kids as they grow up,” Pavlik said. “They become special to you. Any time they work, put themselves in a position where good things can happen to them like this, you can’t help but be happy for them and so proud of them.”
Gold on their minds
Both teams are aiming high, and for good reason.
The men are the defending gold medalists and earned a silver medal a few weeks ago in the World League, while the women won the Olympic silver in 2008 and are No. 1 in the World. They wrapped up their third straight World Grand Prix title earlier this month, posting a 15-0 record in that tournament.
The two Nittany Lion women were major contributors to the title. Hodge was named the Most Valuable Player and Top Scorer of the finals. Over the final five matches of the final round, the outside hitter had 89 kills, 13 blocks and an ace and was the team’s second-best spiker with a 43.8 kill percentage. She hit .376 and averaged 5.26 points per set while playing 14 of the 15 matches in the tournament.
“Ever since I started playing volleyball I wanted to go to the Olympics,” Hodge said. “I just wanted to go as soon as I started playing in school. I wanted to get to college, then start playing professional, and then to the Olympics.”
Harmotto did not play in the finals but did start 10 of the 15 matches at middle blocker, averaging 3.23 points, 1.74 kills and 1.31 blocks per set, and she was the team’s best blocker through 10 preliminary matches while she also hit .482.
“It’s wonderful,” Harmotto said. “It was such a great month on the road with the team. ... It was so cool to be able to throw out any lineup and be able to make things happen. It shows a lot about the depth of the USA team.”
The women’s team is quite the blend of experience and youth. Hodge and Harmotto are two of seven first-time Olympians, but there also are four who will be participating in at least their third Olympics, and Danielle Scott-Arruda will be in her fifth Olympic Games.
The men’s team, which is No. 6 in the world, is also a blend of young and old, though there are fewer with deep Olympic experience. Anderson is one of a half-dozen newcomers, and only opposite Clay Stanley and outside hitter Reid Priddy have multiple appearances with three each.
The 6-foot-10 Anderson has been a key cog with the U.S. for several years now. He won the Best Spiker award and was the team’s top scorer of the NORCECA Men’s Continental Qualification Tournament in May, when he hit .585 and had a 63.4 kill percentage. That followed a 2011 in which he played more sets than any other U.S. player and led the team in scoring.
It was the kind of potential Pavlik saw when he was recruiting Anderson out of high school.
“You just knew with that frame, the way he moved and his arm swing,” Pavlik said, “if he put his mind to it he could become something very, very special.”
The women also are hoping to steal a little of the mojo the men in grabbing the 2008 gold. Hugh McCutcheon was the head coach of the men that year, and now he is in charge of the women. Alan Knipe now leads the men.
Both coaches have been molding this team since they took over the programs in 2009, and there have been plenty of ups and downs along the way.
“It’s essentially a four-year tryout,” Harmotto said. “Players are weaving in and out, coming at different times, there are different injuries, there’s a mix of veterans and young players and I think sometimes it’s like a roller-coaster ride. I was asked the other day if I would do it again, and there were times during the quad when it was not easy ... this takes you to a whole different aspect mentally.”
“It’s been a huge sacrifice,” Anderson said. “I don’t see much of my family or any of my friends back home. It’s awesome. It’s something I love and something I’ve worked really hard to do. It’s every day of training, of working out ---every day is built towards this moment. Now I have to let my body do what it’s been trained to do.”
Rivalries dissolved
All six of the Nittany Lions on the rosters helped make Penn State the center of the college volleyball universe a few years ago.
The four women helped post a run of an unprecedented four straight NCAA titles, shattering numerous records along the way including consecutive matches and sets won. Fawcett and Hodge each picked up AVCA National Player of the Year honors in 2008 and 2009, respectively.
The Penn State men earned their own title in 2008, with Anderson grabbing the AVCA Co-Player of the Year award.
There also were some major battles during women’s team’s run to those consecutive titles. Twice in the finals, the Nittany Lions got the best of Stanford, then beat Texas the next year in one of the best finals in NCAA history. In 2008, another dramatic display of volleyball was turned in by Penn State and Nebraska in the semifinals.
Now, the stars from those programs — Cynthia Barboza and Faluke Akinradewo (Stanford), Destinee Hooker (Texas) and Jordan Larson (Nebraska) — are teammates and the animosity has melted away.
“You get here to the national team,” Harmotto said, “and Cynthia Barboza and Faluke Akinradewo are some of your best friends. At the end of the day they’re just like you. They’re after this dream.”
Still, that doesn’t prevent the occasional reminder of who got to pick up the trophy and the end of each season.
“A lot of them are really close friends,” Fawcett said. “We like to joke around, especially with the Stanford girls. It’s a constant running joke. But there are a lot of bigger things once you get out of college.”
The college days merely served as one of the building blocks to reach this level, following high school and club days and preceding professional careers.
“You can be a great college player, but so much happens after college,” Rose said. “You get yourself into pro leagues, and it’s how you adapt to new coaches and new players and how you adjust to playing with the best players in the country and playing against the best teams in the world.”
Missing the cut
While Anderson, Harmotto and Hodge will get all the glory, Fawcett, Glass and Holt will not be so lucky, watching the matches from home. After working so hard to get to this point, with all the conditioning, dedication and sacrifices, it was a tough blow to find they were not on the final list.
“It’s pretty crushing,” Fawcett said. “It’s still really hard to swallow, even to talk about. You think you’re fine and people talk about it and you get choked up again just because you put so much into it.”
Fawcett said she has received plenty of condolences, and it leaves her feeling awkward.
“We love that people care, it’s just really difficult to respond to that,” Fawcett said. “We don’t know what to say.”
The final cut may have been toughest on Glass, who was just beaten out for the back-up setter position by Courtney Thompson of Washington. Glass had been the starting setter for two of the last three World Grand Prix championships.
“I’m saddened that Alisha wasn’t selected after having the great contributions that she made over the last three years to the program,” Rose said. “But I’m also as a coach very cognizant of our charge to putting together the best roster they feel gives them the best chance to win the gold medal. They have a substitution pattern that incorporates an individual other than Alisha.”
For weeks — before and after the roster was announced — the decision was the subject of endless debate on message boards.
“It’s difficult,” Harmotto said. “You know them and you feel for them. Do I know what it’s like? Can I say that? I don’t. But I know at the end of the day Alisha’s going to get through this. She’s going to become a stronger person, a stronger player. I think she’s a heck of a competitor and I think she has a heck of a future.”
For Glass and Fawcett, their volleyball world hardly came to a complete halt. The alternates made up the bulk of a team sent to Juarez, Mexico, for the Women’s Pan American Cup. The tournament is the qualifier for next year’s Grand Prix, for which the U.S. qualified with a five-set win over Brazil in Friday night’s finals, with Glass starting at setter and Fawcett playing the final three sets.
A little extra exposure
Two of the former Nittany Lions are also showing off more than their serving and passing skills.
Glass and Hodge are among seven members of the program who posed for the most recent issue of ESPN The Magazine’s “The Body Issue.” The annual special edition features numerous athletes from a variety of sports — male and female — posing nude. Various objects, hands, arms and shadows provide strategic cover to the models.
“It was pretty cool, actually,” Hodge said. “The shoot was fun. It was really private. I don’t know what people are thinking it was like, but every shoot was literally just us, the photographer and hair and makeup people. It was very well done. We got to do something fun and different.”
The volleyball women were the only team featured in the issue, and Hodge and Hooker were the only ones who posed who will be in London.
“It was a good group of girls and we were all there to support each other,” Hodge said. “We did individual shots and group shots. At first it was a little nerve-wracking because we were by ourselves, but by the end of it, it didn’t even matter. It was pretty cool.”
The issue hit newsstands July 11 and additional photos of the team and the other athletes who posed are on the magazine’s Web site.
Beyond the national team
While putting on the red, white and blue gets the attention, much of their skills were also honed playing professionally in leagues around the world.
Harmotto was in Italy this past year and will return there this fall — with Glass as a teammate. Fawcett has bounced around, from Puerto Rico to Europe to China last season to Korea this coming year as she fills her passport.
“It’s pretty nice, right?” said Fawcett, who will aim to make the cut in 2016. “It’s not been planned, it’s just the offers are better, there’s more money. I know I’m not going to be playing volleyball for the rest of my life. I would love to go to a place where I can love life, I would love to play in Italy, but there’s not a ton of money in Italy right now and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to play so I kind of have the perspective of, I have to set myself up for later on in life.”
Despite living in Newport Beach, Calif. — with Harmotto — Fawcett has at least ruled out one possible career choice: No beach volleyball.
“Definitely not,” Fawcett said. “I despise the sand, and Logan Tom just told me that I’m lazy — which is also true.”
Anderson, who left school early to begin a pro career in Korea, spent two seasons there and has since played two seasons in Italy and will join a team in Russia this fall. Hodge was with a team in Poland last season and will head to Azerbaijan this fall.
Wherever else around the globe they land, they all know Penn State helped get them to London for a chance of a lifetime.
“There are a whole lot of things that I took with me when I left Penn State four years ago,” Harmotto said. “I have a lot to be thankful for — a whole lot of coaches and supporters and boosters — and I carry all those relationships and experiences with me when I go next month.”
“I don’t think I ever thought I would be where I am, and definitely not in a volleyball career,” Anderson said. “Every kid watches the Olympics, every kid that played sports has that thought, that dream to be on TV and be successful, but it’s kind of a surreal moment to realize that I’m actually here.”
