Volleyball: Southfield's Ware on Point
November 7, 2011
At 15-0, Jade Ware began to realize where Friday’s second game against Southfield might be headed.
At 20-0, her Southfield volleyball coach Dana Cooper did too.
At 23-0, the Bluejays’ fans were about the boil over. Two points later, they did.
No category exists in the MHSAA volleyball record book for consecutive points served. But it’s fair to say few if any have accomplished what Ware did during her team’s District final win – serve all 25 points, without stop, in her team’s shutout victory in the second game.
“The day of, I got a little nervous about the game. I told my team I’d never been so nervous, and they told me it’s a good thing. It means I was going to do something good today,” Ware said. “Everybody made such a big deal of the game (going in). ... I put so much pressure on myself the day of. People were coming up to me (saying), ‘Are you ready? Are you ready?’
“After the first couple of balls go over, it all goes away.”
The Bluejays had outlasted Berkley 25-20 in the match’s first game when Ware began serving the second. The 25-0 win gave her team a 2-0 advantage. Berkley served to start the third game, but Southfield scored the first point. Ware then served the next five points of that game too as the Bluejays went on to finish the victory 25-19.
The win gave Southfield its fifth-straight District championship and advanced the Bluejays to this week’s regional at Lake Orion. Southfield won the first four of those District titles under coach Alisha Love, who stepped down after last season. Dana Cooper took over this fall, and during an early October practice began teaching Ware her new game serve – a jump serve with top spin.
“I knew she had the power to do a jump. She mastered it almost immediately,” Cooper said. “There’s so much top spin on it, some of her balls fall just on the other side of the net.”
“Correctly? I just started doing it a month ago. That’s why I was so amazed,” Ware added.
Ware totaled 13 aces over the three games, tying her for 14th on the MHSAA list for a best-of-five match. She also had 12 digs, and set up teammate Cassadine Reed for the winning kill in that second game. Ware, both a hitter and a setter (the latter along with senior Nicole Rashleigh) in Southfield’s offense, had the match-winning kill in the third.
Hitting is Ware's favorite volleyball skill, although she said she loves how an ace helps her team. She’d hit strings of five good serves in a row leading up to Friday, but that night was the first time her serve had been so consistent over the course of an entire match.
“The only time I’d smile was after an ace or a kill,” Ware said. “I guess I was in my zone. Nothing was getting to me.”
Click to see the MHSAA volleyball record book listings.
(Photos courtesy of Terry McNamara Photography and the Ware family.)
Eye of a Tiger, Will of a Champion
November 6, 2012
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The game was supposed to be fun with a little competition mixed in. That’s the general idea behind students vs. staff volleyball games like the one Vicky Groat stopped to watch during Battle Creek’s Catholic Schools week a few years ago.
But the tallest girl on the court, eighth-grader Amanda McKinzie, showed a little something extra that day – a desire the seven-time MHSAA champion coach continues to admire.
"There were some other kids in her class that were playing that were volleyball players, but (I thought) ‘She’s got it,’” Groat remembered last week. “She understands the game. She knows it’s joking around. But there’s that serious side to her, that competitive side. That’s cool.
“I remember sitting back (later), standing there going, that’s the competitive drive that I saw in her in eighth grade. Hopefully that continues for years to come.”
The 6-foot outside hitter enters the final two weeks of her high school career tonight ranking among the MHSAA all-time leaders in kills and aces, and as one of 10 candidates for this season’s Miss Volleyball Award handed out by the Michigan Interscholastic Volleyball Coaches Association. The Second Half High 5 recipient this week has helped the Tigers to the last three Class D championships and is a big part why they are considered the state’s best team in any class as they pursue one more title before she heads off next season to Virginia Tech.
That’s a mouthful. But this is a season – and career – that McKinzie began preparing for in first grade.
Like most girls who come through the Tigers’ program, that’s when McKinzie first became part of the St. Phil volleyball family. The eventual stars start early and follow the varsity growing up, attending MHSAA Finals and having their shirts autographed by the players they look up to and someday might replace.
By her admission, McKinzie looked up to everyone who played on those teams – although it was hard for the emerging hitter to not pay special attention to Allison Doyle, who graduated from St. Phil in 2006 and went on to an All-America career at Western Michigan.
The game that sticks out most was Doyle’s last, a five-set loss to eventual Miss Volleyball Alisha Glass and Leland in the 2006 Class D Final. St. Phil has won every Class D title since.
“I just remember that game, how crazy it was,” McKinzie said. “I never really thought, ‘Wow, some day that’s going to be me.’”
But Groat had an idea. She’d watched McKinzie during summer camps and as the junior high athletic director, and brought the then 5-9 hitter up to varsity as a freshman. McKinzie was a little erratic at that point – “I’d have games where I’d hit one out, get frustrated and keep swinging harder and it would not go where I wanted it to,” she said – but has turned into a kill machine.
She’s connecting on 49 percent of her kill attempts for the second straight season – a far cry from her 22 percent efficiency as a freshman – and is approaching her best season of 699 kills. She already has posted career highs of 429 digs, 41 blocks and 130 aces.
And it’s not like she’s built her numbers against meager competition. No small-school team in any sport takes on the biggest powers like the Tigers do each fall. They are 68-2-1, with those losses coming during the second weekend of the season to Class A No. 9 Livonia Churchill and then two weeks ago to Class A No. 1 Richland Gull Lake after St. Phil had beaten the Blue Devils the week before. The tie came against Class B No. 6 Wayland.
McKinzie also played basketball through her sophomore season, and started, before focusing solely on volleyball. The drive to win that Groat noticed long ago stretches into just about everything, even “the little things.” McKinzie joked that she’d like to win more at ping-pong – but then explained, ‘No, I’m pretty good at that too.”
That scenario mentioned by McKinzie above – the shots sailing beyond her control – still happens sometimes. But she’s learned control. She’s tough to stop because she’s so powerful. Groat said “she’s kinda mean” before laughing immediately. But the confidence McKinzie has built over the last four seasons is obvious every time she takes the floor.
“I just feel it. I kinda get nervous in a way, a nervous exciting feeling,” McKinzie said. “That’s my favorite way to play.”
PHOTO: Battle Creek’s St. Philip’s Amanda McKinzie blocks a hit during last season’s Class D Semifinals at Kellogg Arena.