Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 1, 1990 TAG: 9007010032
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Teitlebaum Sportswriter
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Coordinators of the volleyball competition at this week's Virginia CorEast State Games hope the events will help make some of the top girls' players more visible.
"We're trying to put together a showcase event for the girls," said Tom Blue, sports coordinator of the State Games. "A lot of the girls are high school players who are looking forward to playing on college teams."
The entire volleyball competition will be played in the Carter Athletic Center at North Cross School and involves tournaments for two different sets of teams.
In one tournament, for girls' 20 years of age and under, there will be teams from the east, west, north and south representing four divisions of Virginia.
The West team is coached by Salem High's David Turk, the Timesland volleyball coach of the year. George Wythe's Anne Fontaine, the Timesland athlete of the year who will play for Radford on a volleyball scholarship, will play for the West along with Elizabeth Deans of James Madison University, Laurel Tanner of Radford and Stephanie Krause of Roanoke College.
There also will be adult coed volleyball competition. Five teams are entered, with three from Roanoke, one from Northern Virginia and one from Richmond.
"These [adult] teams are made up of players from the United States Volleyball Association who may or may not be forming teams to go to the national tournament in August," Blue said.
"These players have been playing from December through May in the USVBA season. They've been in either men's or women's competition. The Roanoke teams have played together in recreational leagues and some in outdoors statewide competition. There was no indoors coed competition."
Blue says there are three strong coed teams. The two visiting squads from Northern Virginia and Richmond figure to be strong, as well as at least one from Roanoke.
"Good coed volleyball is a good sport to watch," Blue said. "In volleyball, some skills are better done by women and some skills are better done by men. When divided up, that makes the sport real exciting."
Blue said the basic skills in volleyball are passing, setting, spiking and blocking. "The men are superior, because of size and strength, at spiking and blocking, while women, because of agility, are stronger at passing, setting and defense."
The girls' tournament will be held all four days, with the bronze-medal match at noon on Sunday, and the gold-silver contest at 4.
The adult coed competition will start Saturday at 9 a.m. and run through 6 p.m. The bronze medal game will be Sunday at 4 and the gold-silver medal contest is at 6.
by CNB