By Dave Krider
MaxPreps.com
Missy Harpenau doesn't think she's injury prone, but she obviously has a high tolerance for pain because she has risen to the greatest heights while nursing injuries.
For example, Harpenau and her Cincinnati Mother of Mercy teammates were jumping up and down and encouraging each other just prior to Ohio's Division I state championship volleyball match earlier this month when a girl's teeth collided with her nose, inflicting a deep cut.
"It hurt pretty bad," she admitted. "There was a lot of blood. I missed all the warmups. The trainer was changing strips under my nose at every timeout. I just worried about getting blood on my jersey, because you can't play. I had a lot of adrenaline and tried not to think about it. I had to keep pressing down on the bandage, because I wasn't going to let a little cut on the nose get in my way."
Despite the handicap, the 6-foot senior delivered 27 kills as the Bobcats (28-1) avenged their only loss with a hard-fought victory, 16-25, 25-12, 26-28, 25-19, 15-11, over defending champion Mount Notre Dame, another Cincinnati powerhouse. With the score deadlocked at 10 during the final game, she hammered kills for three of the last five points. It was no surprise that she was named MVP.
Having played on state runner-up teams as a freshman and junior, Harpenau said the championship "felt very, very good. It was very rewarding. I couldn't ask for a better ending (to her prep career). It's just amazing."
Last summer she experienced a somewhat similar situation little more than a week before her club team (Team Z) was going to compete in the Junior Olympics. She was going down a water slide when her left leg got bent as she entered the pool and she strained a quad muscle. She was on crutches for three days and had a slight limp.
Harpenau guesses that she went to Minneapolis, Minn., that week at "about 85 percent" physically. "It just felt tight," she said of her leg. "It kind of bothered me to dive on it." All she did was lead Team Z to the National 17-and-Under championship in the Open Division and earn MVP honors.
The teenage star has the credentials to bid for Gatorade state and national Player of the Year awards.
National expert John Tawa of PrepVolleyball.com told MaxPreps, "She is technically proficient at every skill. She's the kind of player you want on your side and fear if you're on the other side. She's a quiet leader who leads by example."
Mercy coach Denise Harvey calls Harpenau "the best player I've coached in my career. She was on a very talented team, but she did, however, stand out. She is not super flashy. She is very consistent. Most remember her for attacking, but I think she is a ball-control specialist. She is amazing handling the ball."
Nobody has more respect for Harpenau than Mount Notre Dame coach Donna Mechley, who faced her six times during the past two years. She noted, "You look across the net and if you didn't know anything about her.she's very thin and quiet. You wouldn't expect her to be so good. She is very fast.
"She is so talented that our game plan was designed specifically against her," Mechley continued. "We always put a double block on her at the net. We had a male coach (6-1 Joe Burke) play Missy during our practices. She can see the block and get around it."
Harpenau picked up volleyball at age five from her older sister, Lauren, who used to run little personal "camps" for her. She looks back at the sessions as "intense. If I did something wrong, she would make me run around the house."
She concedes that the sport "kind of came pretty easily. I watched my sister. I liked it because it was not so much of an individual sport. It was more like a team sport. I like that aspect of it. You can't get a point by yourself. The whole team gets credit."
Volleyball has become such a family sport that the Harpenau's have a court in their basement.
Organized volleyball started in fifth grade where she played for the "A" team at Lady of Visitation Elementary School.
She loved soccer, too, and played it through eighth grade. She also played basketball for several years. She finally had to concentrate on volleyball as a ninth grader, however, because both sports were played in the fall.
Harvey coached her club team when she was in eighth grade. She recalled, "I thought Missy was one of the best grade school athletes I had seen in a long time. Her build lent itself to volleyball. She had very good court sense and her skill was really advanced."
Harpenau made the Mercy varsity as a freshman even though, she admitted, "I didn't really expect it. But it was a lot of fun getting to play with my sister (who was a senior)." The Bobcats posted a 20-9 record and finished second in the state tournament.
As a sophomore she moved from libero to an outside hitter and was near the top in kills. That team lost in the regional finals.
She really came into her own as a junior, leading the Bobcats to a 24-5 record and another state runner-up finish. She set the pace with 404 kills (a .333 attack percentage) and had 300 digs. She also set a school record with 27 kills in a single match.
"They were a strong team," Harpenau said of 2006 champion Mount Notre Dame. "It was frustrating, but it gave us so much more motivation to work hard and take the title from them. This year we have 12 seniors and we all knew it would be the last time playing together. In every practice we kicked it up a notch."
The two Cincinnati powerhouses split their home-and-home series this fall, but Harpenau had the satisfaction of breaking her own school record with 33 kills on the Mount Notre Dame court. She finished her senior year with a school-record 458 kills (a .338 attack percentage) and 348 digs.
Harpenau's next stop will be hometown University of Cincinnati. Looking back on her brilliant career, she can't help but thank her sister for all those laps she used to make her run when she did something wrong as a young girl. Those early lessons helped shape a magnificent work ethic which, in turn, has enabled her to reach the loftiest heights of high school volleyball.