It's a family tradition

Lacey Angello might only be 11 years old, but she’s already played in one national championship game and later this month will play in a second national championship tournament. Lacey plays for the Asics Mavs 12 Blue team, a competitive 12-and-under USA volleyball team out of the Kansas City area. The Mavs made a run all the way to the title game of the USA Volleyball Girls’ Junior National Championships, but lost a tight contest to a Puerto Rico team in the finals to finish the year with just two 12-and-under losses and the national runner-up title.
At the end of July, Lacey and her partner Madison Lilley will play in the USA Beach Volleyball Junior Tour to contend for the national title in 12-and-under beach volleyball.
She’s having a heck of a summer, but if you go back to the beginning of the youngest Angello’s volleyball career, you see she’s just following family tradition.

In the Lansing volleyball scene, the name Angello is well known. Lisa graduated from Lansing is 2010 after an all-state senior season and is now playing at Kansas City Kansas Community College. Lori will be a senior for the Lady Lions this year after being named all-league and all-state last season.
Lacey, who’ll be a sixth grader this fall and still has to wait another year to play for the Lansing school team, said she was following in her sisters’ footsteps with her passion for volleyball.
“If my sisters wouldn’t have played, I wouldn’t have gotten into it,” Lacey said. “At their tournaments I would grab a ball and start playing against the wall. I definitely took after my sisters.”
She said she’s been playing volleyball since she was five, but only started playing competitively two years ago.
Her parents, Scott and Shelly, agree that her older sisters helped shape her to the player she’s become.
“Those girls (her sisters) were not easy on her,” Shelly said. “If you know anything about Lori and Lisa (playing volleyball), they're mean. They stuck it to her and she had to learn these moves to keep the ball out of her face.”
Lacey said she also developed her skill with help from another family member — her grandmother.
“I used to make my grandma play volleyball with me,” Lacey explained, describing a game with quilt racks set up as the net and players in low chairs or on the floor.
“They'd play for hours, and it was intense games where you were just having to react,” Scott said of the game Lacey and her grandma call Court One. “That's why she's so fast now. She played libero on the team last year, and she was 10. She's just a great defender.”
Beyond the court, Shelly said that having all the girls playing has made the family even closer.
“(Getting into volleyball) is one of the best things that's happened to our family,” Shelly said. “It's our family time, it's our vacation time, it's just what we do.  And it's given us an extended family, with the families of the other girls. It's just a good time.”

The 2011 season actually started a little disappointing for Lacey. After playing for the Mavs 12-and-under team last year, she said she hoped to move up with her team to play 14s this year — even though she still had two years of 12s eligibility left. Once she started playing, this year as an outside hitter and defender, Lacey said she was glad to be on the 12s team again.  
It’s hard not to enjoy the success of the Overland Park-based team. The Mavs qualified for nationals two ways – both by winning the Heart of America regional tournament and by winning the national qualifier tournament held in Kansas City. They played in the national qualifier tournament in St. Louis as well, and it was there they were beaten in 12-and-under play for the first time all season, by a Cleveland Ohio team called CVC 12 Black.
“They not only earned their trip to nationals through the region, they also won a qualifier,” Scott said. “In a lot of sports you can just sign up and go (to nationals), but in volleyball you have to qualify.”
As one of 48 teams to earn a spot in the 2011 USA Volleyball Girls’ Junior National Championships, the Mavs traveled to Atlanta, Ga. for the four-day tournament.
On the first two days of the national competition, the Mavs went 5-0 in their six-team pool — including a win over Borinquen Coqui 12 from Puerto Rico that would win the title — to advance to the top 24.
“We just beat them at the wrong time,” Lacey said of the Borinquen Coqui team. The Mavs won the first meeting of the two teams in straight sets, 25-23 and 25-20.
The field was narrowed to 16 on day three, with the Mavs beating both Blackswamp 12 and St. Louis CYC 12 Green to advance. This set up a big game for the Mavs, as they were next pitted against the tournament’s No. 1 seed, the CVC Black team that had handed the Mavs their only 12-and-under loss in St. Louis.
The Mavs proved to be too much for CVC Black the second time around, however, as Lacey and her teammates advanced with a 25-14 and 25-15 win over the Ohio team.
“We crushed them,” Scott said.
The game was even more emotional for Lacey, as one of her friends plays for the CVC Black.
“I have a friend on that team,” she explained. “We had met at one of my sister's (Lori) tournaments when we were like five. We would just play, pass and set back-and-forth.”
“This was at qualifiers past, her sister Lori and India's sister Dorey played each other at qualifiers, and she and India would hook up and play and now they're playing against each other,” Shelly added.
After that win, the Mavs moved to the top 8 to play in the gold bracket for a chance at a national title. They started day four and the gold bracket with wins over Temecula 12 and Wave 12, both teams from Southern California. Those wins put the Mavs into the title game against the familiar foe Borinquen Coqui.
The Puerto Rico team was able to make some key adjustments, Scott said, and that helped them win 25-20, 16-25 and 20-18.
“Game three was a phenomenal match to 15,” Scott said, noting it took to 20 for the win. “We had three leads after 15, just needed one point to win the national championship, but we couldn’t get it.”
Changing coverage on the Mavs hitting, she continued, was a big factor in the win for Borinquen Coqui.
“The first time we played them I had this little cut down shot that would go right in the corner on the far side, and there was no one there,” Lacey said. “In the championship game, they brought someone in there, so I couldn't do that anymore and had to adjust to the block.”
When the tournament was finished, both Borinquen Coqui and the Mavs stood with 10-1 tournament records. The Mavs actually won more sets, going 21-2 in sets while Borinquen Coqui went 20-5, but they Mavs had to settle for second in the standings.
Regardless, veteran Lansing High School volleyball coach Julie Slater said that Lacey is the first Lansing girl to ever play in a national championship game.
Next year, when Lacey is actually 12, her dad says the Mavs 12s team is expected to be a national force.
“This 12-and-under Mavs team is extremely strong,” Scott said. “Last year she was 10 and was on the Mavs team that got fifth in the country, this year they got second. Next year she'll play 12s again and they're kind of expected to win next year, they'll be pretty loaded.”

Later this month, Lacey will play in her second national volleyball championships of the summer. She heads to Chicago July 23 for the USA Beach Volleyball Junior Tour to play against 19 other teams on the shores of Lake Michigan. Shelly said it was just happenstance that Lacey got into beach volleyball.
“It was kind of an accident,” Shelly said. “We heard there was a qualifier in Kansas City, and that was kind of fluke thing to have it in Kansas City. Everyone said playing in the sand improves your game on the court, so we thought why not just do it to make her better since it’s so hard to get around in the sand. We just went out there, not expecting much really, and it was so fun. It was a great day, and they ended up winning.”
Lacey too said she was surprised to do so well right out of the gate in the sand.
“Our first time in the sand we win the tournament,” Lacey said. “It was crazy.”
Lacey’s partner was on a team she played on last year, and she has a sand volleyball court in her neighborhood so that’s where the duo practices. She said there’s a couple of big differences between sand and court volleyball, noting that it’s only two players and you can’t set a serve.
“It’s hard because they have to remember when they’re going back and forth,” Shelly said of playing both during the same season. “There are a couple of a rule differences.”
Playing in her second national tournament within a month, Lacey said, is exciting.
“It’ll be fun to see the other teams and play on Lake Michigan,” Lacey said.

Looking forward, Lacey already has lofty plans for her volleyball career.
“I want to play at Washburn or KU,” the 11-year-old said of her future volleyball plans. “Washburn with Coach (Chris) Herron because I do camps at Washburn, or at KU because I’d get tickets to basketball games and I’d get to play for KU.”
Her athletic ability isn’t limited to just one sports, however. Lacey is a four-time state champion bowler, and she also plays basketball and softball. She said she’s started playing tennis for fun, but quickly added she won’t play tennis in school since it falls during the same season as volleyball — her first love.