EV move a learning experience

Jim Dorr quickly realized his mistake.

The East Valley High School volleyball coach was preparing his varsity squad for Thursday’s road trip to Clarkston for the team’s first Great Northern League match with the Bantams since dropping from the Greater Spokane League.

“I asked the kids ‘How many of you have been there before?’ ” Dorr said. “But they just looked at each other with blank expressions. I guess it was longer ago than I’d originally thought.”

It has been. The last time East Valley was in a league with West Valley, Cheney, Clarkston and Pullman, this year’s freshman class still was a year away from entering kindergarten.

“Didn’t seem like it was that long ago,” Dorr said. “I distinctly remember teaching my daughter about radical (numbers) on the bus riding down there.”

Now a senior, Alyssa Dorr returns for her second season as the team’s starting setter. With a supporting cast filled with young and athletic hitters, having an experienced leader is important.

“We’re starting off with an All-Greater Spokane League second team setter – and that’s a big deal,” Dorr said. “Right now we’re very limited on experience. We have kids who have played a lot of volleyball. They just haven’t played it at the varsity level.”

Also back this year is 5-foot-10 senior Amber Swyers, a multi-sport standout, along with seniors Bryce Combs and Laynie Ereaux.

Dorr said he’s been especially pleased with 5-11 junior Brooklyn Bellomy, who worked so hard over the summer, between summer basketball and volleyball, that the coach ordered her to take a little time off.

“She worked so hard and was so committed to doing everything she could to make herself better that I told her that she needed to take some time off and have a little fun before the summer was over,” Dorr said. “I was beginning to worry that she’d been working too hard and that she was going to over train.”

Dorr said he’s moved the junior from the middle, where her height combined to give the team a formidable blocking force, to the outside, where her hitting ability can shine.

“We have other middles, but we were pretty inexperienced on the outside,” he said. “She’s hitting the ball so well – just the sound she makes when she hits the ball – she’s going to be just fine. She’s jumping over everyone and I think she’s putting it all together. She led us in kills for the first time (Tuesday against Cheney).

“She’s a leader all the way through.”

This year, the team will have to find that experience in a whole new Class 2A setting against teams they know only in passing. Instead of battling the likes of Shadle Park and Mt. Spokane for a berth in the state Class 3A tournament as they did in the GSL, they will face defending state champion Pullman and West Valley, which placed seventh last year.

“There are a lot of different things we’ll have to get used to, things like getting playing times and dates together,” Dorr said. “And with all of it, you have to wonder how long you’re going to be here. All we know for certain is that we’re going to be in the GNL for this two-year cycle.

“The thing that we realize is that we’re not going down to a weaker league. It doesn’t matter what league you play in in this part of the country; it’s going to be a tough, tough league. We had a real eye-opener in our match (a loss) to Pullman.”

Dorr said his players have been exceptionally committed to the program, and he appreciates the sacrifices his players and their families make to help improve East Valley volleyball.

“We had between 20 and 25 players in the gym every day over the summer,” he said. “We’d play for about 90 minutes and then we’d do conditioning for another 45 minutes. These days, to be a competitive volleyball player, you have to make a huge commitment in time, and that’s not just the players who do that.”

That hard work has begun to pay off.

“These kids listen to everything you tell them and then they go out and do it,” he said. “Right now, they’re playing pretty good volleyball in stretches and then falling off. We’re working to make those stretches last longer and longer and they are.

“We have our base right now, but we’re nowhere near as good as we will be at the end of the year.”

The move reunites East Valley with its longtime rival, West Valley. Each team struggled to find new rivalries in separate leagues. Rekindling the longtime relationship between the schools will take a little time, but it will come back strong, Dorr predicted.

“I think the kids will have to relearn this whole rivalry thing,” he said. “It will be OK this year, but it will be much bigger next year. I think it’s a bigger deal to us, as coaches and as parents, than it is for the kids at first.”

The Knights, through the first six GNL matches, are 4-2. They lost matches to Pullman and West Valley while knocking off Medical Lake, Deer Park, Cheney and Clarkston.

“It’s going to be a different year for us,” Dorr summed up. “But you know, different isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”