A Tall Volleyball Story : Irvine High’s Cari Delson Has Come a Long Way, Make No Bones About It

There are people who have known Irvine High School’s Cari (Bones) Delson for a long time who do not know her real first name. There are people who will tell you, in one breath, what an exceptionally talented volleyball player she is and what an exceptionally stinko player she was.

Cari Delson, 17, is growing up. Six years ago, she had all the girth of a Wiffle Ball bat and couldn’t hit a volleyball 10 feet. Today, she’s one of the county’s top high school players and probably weighs in at four, five Wiffle Ball bats easy.

Delson was 5-feet 7-inches tall when she was in the sixth grade. She was very skinny and very awkward.

Her parents, Steve and Carol, thought sports might improve her confidence and coordination--not to mention, benefit her knees which were taking quite a beating at the time from the Delson family doorways. There remains a scar under her right knee cap from one memorable meeting with a doorway.

So, when Cari was in sixth grade, her parents sent her to a sports camp at UC Irvine. She started playing soccer, but ended up playing volleyball, a turn of events that owed little to fate and a lot to weather.

“It was too hot to be running around outside,” Delson said. “I wanted to be inside where it was cool.”

But, the sport did pique her interest and she soon tried out with the Orange County Volleyball Club.

“She was about as big as a toothpick and she was so weak,” said Al Gasparian, who used to coach the club and now coaches at Golden West College. “We would set her up 10-feet from the net to serve and she still couldn’t get the ball to reach the net. She’d cry after every practice.”

At the time, Cari couldn’t run the length of a volleyball court. There was only one reason she was kept around by the club.

“I was tall,” Delson said. “But as far as being athletic, I was pretty sad. I was just kind of there.”

Before long, Delson became “Bones.” The nickname, a natural, was given to her by a coach, Charlie Brande, and has stuck.

“At first, I’d cry when I’d hear it, but I learned to get used to it,” Delson said. “There are a lot of people who don’t know my real name because I’ve been called Bones for so long.” By the time she arrived at Irvine High, Delson hadn’t so much blossomed as just started to bloom. She was still skinny, still weak.

“We’d have the girls run for conditioning and Cari was always at the back of the pack,” said Mark McKenzie, Irvine coach.

Still her skills, after three years with the club, were so solid that Delson was starting on varsity as an outside hitter in her freshman year in 1984. That season, with Elaina Oden leading the way, the Vaqueros won the Southern Section 4-A championship.

After going 9-7 the next season, Irvine surprised virtually everybody by winning the South Coast League championship and making it to the 4-A final last year. The Vaqueros lost to Gahr in the final.

A lot of the attention last season, and this one, went to Bev Oden, the third outstanding Irvine player to come from the Oden family. Elaina and Kim were the others.

However, the fact remains Delson was named the South Coast League’s most valuable player last season as well as all-Southern Section as a middle blocker. And the fact is that Delson, in her senior year, is the heart and soul of the Vaqueros.

“She’s so animated during a game,” McKenzie said. “She’s the first to go over and console a player when they’ve made a mistake. I think it’s obvious to anyone who comes out and watches us play that Cari and Bev are both outstanding. But if someone just follows us through the papers, they’ve probably got the impression that Bev is our only weapon.”

Delson now is 5-11, and McKenzie reports that she runs at the head of the pack during conditioning. Though he admits, “she’s not exactly poetry in motion.”

What she has become is one of the best all-around players in the county.

“She loves to hit,” said Jenny Evans, a friend and an outstanding player at Newport Harbor. “But everyone loves to hit. She can play the back row well. A lot of tall people have a problem back there handling passes. I’d say, right now, she’s playing the best of anyone around.”

So her stature has grown. Bones is a funny reminder now. But the games aren’t.

“When we made it to the (Southern Section) final the second time, I was saying to myself, ‘This isn’t the same place,’ ” she said. “It had been just for fun a couple years before. Now, it was serious. Now, I was serious.”

Of course, how serious is all relative. Delson is borderline frantic on a volleyball court, encouraging teammates, shouting instructions, laughing.

Delson says she doesn’t mind being second-page news to Bev Oden, and she admits that she can identify with someone who’s having a hard time because, “I still remember how bad I was.”

McKenzie said: “She has a great deal of appreciation for someone who doesn’t have all the talent in the world.”

Which is all a part of Cari Delson and all a part of growing up.