Iowa Teams Competing in Nationals

Iowa has very good competition when it comes to volleyball, and this shows by the amount of teams that have qualified for Nationals in New Orleans. There are 4 different divisions at Nationals, Open, National, USA and American. To qualify for open you have to win a national qualifier in the open division. To qualify for a National bid you have to win regionals (all teams in your state). To get a USA bid you have win (sometimes 2nd and 3rd places receive one too) a National Qualifier in the USA division. To receive an American bid you have to get 2nd in your region, or you can also earn one in a National Qualifier in the American Division. 

There are a few exceptions to these rules. Let's say if your team is really good and have competed in the gold bracket in NQ's but you came up short of a bid there is still a chance that you can get one. This is called an at large bid. Also let's say you get third at regionals and the team that gets first receives an Open bid after they won regionals. That team can decide if they want the bid to go back to the region, so therefore the 3rd place team would have a bid now. My team (CIA 17 Black) got 2nd at regionals, so originally we had an American bid. We just got offered a National bid and we accepted. 

12s	Attack 121	National
	CIS 12M	American
	Rapid Spikers 12 Black	American
13s	Six Pack 13	National
	Iowa Rockets 13 Black	American
14s	Six Pack 14	National
	Iowa Rockets 14R	American
15s	CIA 15 Black	National
	All Iowa Attack 15 Red	American
16s	Iowa Rockets 16R	National
	CIA 16 Black	American
	All Iowa Attack 16 Red	Open
17s	IPVA 17 Black	National
	CIA 17 Black	American
	Iowa Rockets 17R	USA
18s	All Iowa Attack 18 Red	National
	Six Pack 18	American
	CIA 18 Black	Open
	IPVA 18 Black	American
Boys
14s	Johnston 14u Boys	Open

All Iowa teams that have qualified

All teams that have qualified

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Kennedy Volleyball Poster and Fun Shirt Ideas

Every year we have a poster with a fun saying or a quote on it and seniors and returning letter winners get to be on it. It is going to be my senior year this season (which is crazy) so I wanted it to be an awesome poster. A couple days ago all of the seniors had a meeting and we thought of some ideas for the poster and our fun shirts. Fun shirts are usually what we wear to school on game days, or we wear them over our jerseys to warm up in. They are usually a bright color and have Kennedy Volleyball on them. After discussing about a million options for the poster we decided on a pretty sweet one.

On the bottom of the poster will be our schedule and the freshman, sophomore, and jv teams’ pictures. Right above that we are going to have a picture of all of our forearms in a circle with a volleyball in the center. We are going to each pick a word to write on our arms that represents us, or is important to us. Above that picture is going to be a full body picture of us. We are going to wear dark skinny jeans, a black shirt and black heels. The picture is going to be taken downtown in front of a brick building. On the very top of the poster we are going to have the saying “Inhale confidence, exhale doubt”. I am really excited about the outcome of this poster, I think it will turn out really cool.

For our fun shirts we decided on a black shirt with neon blue writing. It is going to say “Bring ‘Em Out” on the front and have a faded out volleyball behind the text. On the back it is going to say “Don’t worry we are just wearing our warm ups”. I can’t wait to see how this turns out, because it should be sweet. We were also thinking about making a spirit jersey to wear as warm ups this year, just to have something special for our senior season. This is what a spirit jersey looks like. 

I am really excited for this season, our goal is to make it to state and I think we can definitely do that this year. We have worked really hard the past couple years, and have just come up a little short. This year we are coming into this season strong and determined to get that state qualifying banner, and possibly win a state championship. 

Word Count: 432

Beach Volleyball

Since beach is starting soon, I thought I might as well go over some of the main concepts and rules of playing in the sand. Beach volleyball is totally different than indoor. Different rules, different strategies, and different skills to learn. Although there are different rules you have to have the same mindset to compete in either sport. In order to be successful in beach volleyball you need to know the important rules and learn some of the strategies.

The rules involved in beach are very different from indoor. The main difference is the rule about setting. In beach you are not allowed to set the ball unless it has absolutely no spin (which is pretty much impossible). So when you are setting your partner your best option is to forearm pass it. It takes some time to get used to controlling the ball that way but you will get the hang of it after a while. You also can not open hand tip the ball like you can in indoor. The other main rule is that if you are blocking and you touch the ball you and your partner only have 2 contacts to get it back over the net, where in indoor you would have 3 contacts.

Obviously in beach volleyball you are playing in the sand and usually you are playing doubles with a partner. This leads to some strategies that can help you succeed in this awesome sport. The first tip is to either serve/ hit to the player that can’t pass or the player that is the least offensive threat. This will give you a better opportunity to score on that rally. Serving and attacking to the person who is not as good at passing will most likely make their side become out of system, giving you a free ball. Serving and hitting to the person who is the least offensive threat will give you a better chance at digging their attack. If you are playing a team where both players can attack and pass decently then you can try serving in between them and that will usually get them out of system. Other strategies include blocking, going over on the second ball, and using smart shots. In beach blocking can be a little tricky and it takes a lot of practice to get used to it, but it is really fun when you stuff block someone in beach. If you and your partner decide to block, the person blocking tells the defender what part of the court he/ she is going to be blocking. The defender is then responsible for the other part of the court. For example if I was blocking the cross court shots for both hitters I would hold up 2 fingers on each hand (1 finger on each hand means I am blocking the line shots) and my partner would defend the line shots. Some smart shots in beach are a short pokey (tipping it with your knuckles) or a high roll shot to the deep corners. These shots will cause the other team to scramble for the ball and give you an easy ball back over.

Beach is such a fun sport, I can’t wait for practices to start so we can get back out in the sand!

Word Count: 551