WORTH THE TRIP : Junior Volleyball Team Hits the Road and Returns With National Title

Just weeks before they embarked on their whirlwind 21-day volleyball tour last month, members of the Cal Juniors girls’ volleyball club met with a great, opposing force:

Their parents.

The Cal Juniors, an Orange County-based 18-and-under all-star team, had been invited to three prestigious tournaments: an international tournament at South Bend, Ind.; the Volleyball Festival at Davis, Calif., and the Junior Nationals at Fort Collins, Colo.

But, because the trip would require playing more than 30 matches in fewer than 20 days--and would cost approximately $1,000 per player--the parents wanted them to skip at least one of the tournaments.

“It was expensive, number one,” Jennifer Gratteau, Cal Junior team captain, said. “But mostly, our parents thought because of all the travel and playing, we’d get hurt or tired or sick or something.

“Our team has been aiming for the Junior Nationals all year. Our parents didn’t want us to be dead by the time we got there.”

Concerns were well-founded. Two years ago, after finishing second at the 1986 Junior Nationals in St. Joseph, Miss., many of the Cal Juniors wound up sick or injured after they rushed to another tournament in Northern California less than a week later.

Still, the players and Coach Tim Mennealy very much wanted to go to all three.

At a meeting before the trip, Mennealy convinced the parents that it was well worth the physical and fiscal expense.

“Basically, I tried to present them with the view that the experience of traveling to all three tournaments was just as valuable as the possibility of winning the national championship,” Mennealy said.

As it turned out, Mennealy and the players knew best.

Not only did the Cal Juniors survive the trip, they won the U.S. Volleyball Assn. Junior National championship Saturday at Fort Collins.

“The whole trip was an experience of a lifetime,” Mennealy said. “That’s what we went for, and it turned out exactly perfect.”

The Cal Juniors won the title--their first since 1981--by defeating a longtime rival, the Orange County Volleyball Club, 15-13, 15-12, 15-10, in the final match of the double-elimination tournament.

The Cal Juniors include seven just-graduated seniors, all of whom received scholarships to Division I colleges.

They are Elaine Youngs of El Toro, Gratteau of Marina and Laurie Jones of Huntington Beach, all en route to UCLA in the fall; Sharon Kasser of Huntington Beach and Heather Schoeny of Capistrano Valley (University of the Pacific); Nicole Appleman of El Toro (Stanford), and Buffy Romero of Long Beach Wilson (Colorado).

Just getting to the championship final was a tremendous battle for the Cal Juniors.

After they lost their championship bracket third-round match to the Orange County Volleyball Club, the Cal Juniors were sent to the losers’ bracket, where they had to win six consecutive matches--against six seeded teams--to reach the championship final.

The Orange County Volleyball Club, by contrast, needed to win only two more matches to reach the final.

“I think we showed a lot of character in having to battle back so hard to reach the final,” Schoeny said.

“But we had a lot of confidence in ourselves and each other. We knew, somehow, we were going to win it from the beginning.”

Youngs, an outside hitter, was named a first-team All-American. Jones and Gratteau were named to the second team.

Youngs and Schoeny came up with the team’s trip slogan: “Some Said We’d Be Dead.”

“We were going to put it on T-shirts for everyone when we got home,” Schoeny said. “But . . . well, I’m too tired to do anything for a while.”

Orange County teams fared well in other divisions at last week’s Junior Nationals.

Newport Harbor graduate Drew Sheward was named the most valuable player in leading Balboa Bay Club to the boys’ 18-and-under title.

Balboa Bay Club also won boys’ titles in the 16-and-under and 14-and-under divisions.

In the girls’ division, Mission Valley Volleyball Club of Laguna Beach won the 16-and-under title, and Orange County Volleyball club won the 14-and-under title.