By Matt Florjancic
MaxPreps.com
Anybody can win a title, but a true mark of a champion is the ability to defend the top spot.
Many athletes use this mantra in training to motivate themselves for an upcoming game or bout. A few years ago, winning a championship used to be the ultimate achievement in athletics. Now, coaches and players are focused not so much on winning a championship as they are on what will happen after the crown has been claimed.
Though there is pressure to take programs from being competitive to a legacy of championship banners and trophies, there are still some teams who take in the crowning moment and savor every ounce of work that went into winning.
The Maria Stein Marion Local volleyball team finished the 2007 season 28-1. The Flyers won the school’s first Division IV volleyball state championship with a 25-14, 25-22, 25-16 victory over perennial power Norwalk St. Paul (26-3).
“Last year was our first Midwest Athletic Conference championship since 1983,” sixth-year Flyers coach Amy Steininger said. “That was a long time. We’ve been competing every year. We just seem to finish second or third in the MAC the past five years, other than last year. We came close to winning state in 2002. We were state runners-up to Norwalk St. Paul. These young girls definitely had good role models to look up to with last year’s team.”
“It felt amazing,” junior setter Shelby Moeller said of winning the MAC and state titles last year. “It was probably the best experience of my life just because we had such good chemistry with the team and it just made sense to win it. We just all gelled so well together.”
In the finals, Moeller had 16 set assists, four service aces and eight defensive digs. Then-freshman Alyssa Winner collected 14 digs with one service ace against St. Paul.
Winner was a Division IV honorable mention All-Ohio selection a year ago. Three other Flyers, Kristin Bergman (second team), Abby Niekamp (first team) and Megan Barhorst (first team) earned All-Ohio accolades. Steininger was named the Ohio High School Volleyball Coaches Association Division IV Coach of the Year.
With the 2008 season a little less than a week away, the only thing Marion Local has in its sights is an Aug. 23 game at Lima Shawnee.
“We feel the same pressure this year that we do every year,” Steininger said. “We want to play for a MAC championship and a state championship every year. We feel we can do that. We can play at a high level, but it’s going to take time with these girls being young.
“Do we feel the pressure to defend, no,” she added. “We play in the MAC, the Midwest Athletic Conference. That is the toughest small-school conference in the state. This year in the MAC, I don’t think there’s a team that’s favored. We just need to worry about getting the girls prepared for every game the best we can. We don’t want to throw them to the wolves right off the bat with information-overload.”
Steininger graduated a lot of talent, but the cupboard is not bare by any means. Marion Local had just one loss combined between the varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams. As JV and freshmen players, the varsity’s new additions know nothing but success at the high school level.
“I’ve been real happy with our summer so far and our preseason,” Steininger said. “We have a lot of young faces, a lot of new girls on the team. We have some inexperience as far as playing at the varsity level. The girls know how to win. Now, they’ve just got to learn to win at the varsity level, where the pressure is greater and the level of play is higher.
“We’re really going back to the basics with these girls, taking it one practice at a time and just really trying to build on each practice,” Steininger said. “We want to keep their confidence up and just keep building as the season goes on and hopefully peak by tournament time.”
For the Flyers to make another run at the tournament, Steininger wants the older, more experienced players on the team to lead the younger athletes through the ups and downs of a varsity season. By seeing how the players mix, Steininger will be able to build a rotation based on the strengths of the girls on her roster.
“Alyssa Winner started for us at outside hitter,” Steininger said. “She should start for us again at outsider hitter this year. We also have a returning setter from last year, Shelby Moeller. She’s are small center. We have a returning libero in Jessica Schwieterman. We only have three seniors on our roster this year and five returning letter winners.”
The youthful nature of this team may have the coaches taking things as they come, but the players are focused on winning. They do not want to be the team with a strong showing one year who struggles to maintain excellence.
“Everybody on the team is expected to work hard, but at the same time have fun and just keep on the tradition as long as possible,” Moeller said. “At Marion Local, we like to try as hard as we can to win, but just have fun and be good competition for everybody.
“I’m expecting huge things from the team,” concluded Moeller. “This year, we are coming back with amazing defense. We lost a lot of height from last year, but we’re very defensive. We’re determined to keep going and pushing ourselves to win and keep competing with the best.”
Matt Florjancic currently works as a freelance reporter and sports show host for WOBL and WDLW