NATIONAL TITLE FOR CITY TEAM
Albuquerque team takes the gold in Indianapolis
Ohana, an Albuquerque youth volleyball team, recently won a national title in Indianapolis.
Perhaps fittingly for this generation, the thing that perhaps put these 10 girls over the top could be found in a motivational video one of them tracked down on YouTube.
“Actually,” said 13-year-old Tiona Drumm, “this is gonna sound kinda weird. Before our games one day, I listed to a motivational speech (on YouTube), and I told everyone, ‘We can do this!’ And we kept that mentality.” To say the least. The 10 girls of Ohana, a U13 club team at the Duke City Volleyball Academy, recently won a national championship.
In the final of the 2019 USA Volleyball Girls Junior National Championships in Indianapolis, Ohana defeated TStreet from Southern California, 25-18, 25-21.
Ohana, a team composed mostly of girls from Albuquerque, plus one each from Santa Fe and Rio Rancho, went 11-0 in the tournament and dropped just two sets along the way.
The win over SoCal left them with a 65-5 record for their club season, and a No. 8 national ranking.
“Sometimes you feel like, I don’t know to explain it … you feel like crying,” said 12-year-old Karyna Werley, a setter and right-side hitter.
“You get really flustered and it takes a second to understand that you won a national championship,” added Drumm, 13, a middle hitter and blocker, asked about this accomplishment sinking in with the group.
“It’s taken a while,” she said with a smile.
“It only sinks in when we talk about it,” said 13-year-old setter Miquela Sandoval. “It doesn’t seem like it happened, but it actually did.”
This was the team’s fourth tournament championship of its season, which began last October with tryouts. Half a dozen of these girls had placed fifth the year before in the U12 division.
Ohana — which translates into Hawaiian for “family” — won the title in the “Gold” division, the second-highest tier of play. Only the “Open” division ranked as more exclusive.
In addition to Werley, Drumm and Sandoval, other girls on the team were: right-side hitter Leyana Hopkins, libero Makayla Martinez, outside hitter Jeweliana Chino, middle hitter Amesha Benson, outside hitter Ava Alvarado, plus defensive specialists Kailey Shirley and Nalanie Lozoya. In capturing a rare club national title for the state of New Mexico, Ohana’s head coach was former University of New Mexico Lobo assistant Gitaik Hong, assisted by Danielle Stevens and Marisol Sandoval.
Miquela Sandoval said most of the girls hope to reassemble in the fall and make a run at the “Open” division national championship event in the U14 division next summer.
Werley, Drumm and Sandoval expect girls from other clubs to try and join this program, especially given the timing and this honor.
“Next year, people are gonna want to push (the bar) that much higher,” Sandoval said, “because of what we accomplished. And we’ll have to work that much harder.”