Oden Always Spells Trouble for Her Opponents

You can call her BevO, or you can call her Bever, or Odie or B or just plain O.

“Everybody calls me something different,” said Bev Oden, middle blocker for Irvine High School’s volleyball team.

“This one girl calls me ‘Big Guy.’ I don’t know why. There is ‘Bevy.’ A lot of people call me that. I don’t know, there are just hundreds of nicknames.”

But her most recent and perhaps most apt title is Most Valuable Player.

Oden, The Times’ athlete of the week, was named MVP of the Division I state volleyball tournament at Cal State Fullerton Saturday.

She had 25 kills in an 11-15, 15-3, 15-13, 15-10 victory over Davis High School to lead her team to an unprecedented second consecutive championship.

aShe received a plaque to add to the countless trophies she has collected since she began playing club volleyball in seventh grade. “I don’t know how many trophies I have,” she said.

But she knows which trophy counts the most.

“I think it would be (the trophy) for winning state this year, because it meant a lot. This is my senior year,” she said. “Last year when we won, we were saying, ‘Gosh, I wish this were our senior year,’ because we could have ended on a good note and not have had to come back next year and do it again. But we did, and it just meant a lot.”

So Saturday, Oden was on top of the world, having capped her school volleyball career with the highest possible honors--South Coast League, Southern Section 5-A and state Division I championships and the MVP award. A great way to end the volleyball season, right?

Great, yes. End, no. Sunday, Oden and three of her teammates signed up to play rigorous off-season volleyball with the Orange County volleyball club team--a sort of all-star league for the county’s best players.

“We have done this every single year since seventh grade,” Oden said. “We know what it’s for. We know it’s helping us. This is the kind of dedication we are going to need if we want to go on and do this anywhere else. So if we start now, it will be easier later.”

Going on for Oden, who is considered the No. 1 high school volleyball player in the nation, means getting her pick of the nation’s top college volleyball programs.

It is a sport she loves, but it’s also a means to an end.

“I know (volleyball) will get me to where I want to be--in college,” she said. “I play because I like it, because it is fun, because I have tried other sports and I like this one the best.

“It’s a real emotional kind of game,” Oden said. “Whether you win or not depends on where the momentum is, and the momentum can change at any time. You never know when. And it is a quick game, and that makes it exciting for us and exciting for the people who watch it. That’s why I like it.”

TOP PERFORMERS

Joni Easterly collected 23 points, 14 rebounds and 4 assists to lead the Katella High School girls’ basketball team to a 50-20 victory over Artesia in the Knights’ season opener Thursday.

Melody Mayfield of Saddleback scored 34 points in the quarterfinals of the Saddleback basketball tournament, leading her team to a 59-40 victory over Western Thursday.

Freshman Keri Phebus of Corona del Mar won the Southern Section individual singles championship Thursday, the first Orange County girl to win the title in the tournament’s 18-year history. Phebus defeated Nicole Hummel of San Marino, 6-1, 7-5, at the Irvine Racquet Club.

Bev Oden

Irvine High School

Position: Middle blocker

Height, Class: 6-5, Senior

Last Week: Oden was named most valuable player at the Division I state volleyball championships. She had 25 kills Saturday to lead the undefeated Vaqueros to an 11-15, 15-3, 15-13, 15-10 victory over Davis.

Season: Oden, an All-American, led her team to the South Coast League championship, the Southern Section 5-A championship and a 21-0 record.