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Volleyball: Pair of Lady Jags compete at national beach volleyball tourney
BY JUSTIN THOMAS, Staff writer
While many of Flower Mound’s volleyball players begin preparing for the upcoming season with tryouts next week, two Lady Jaguars will be making a bit of a different transition.
Annie Aspenson and Liz Theesfield have spent the past month playing beach volleyball, culminating Saturday when they competed in the Junior Beach National Championships in Manhattan Beach, Calif.
The duo, competing for 692 Volleyball under coach and former professional beach volleyballer Scott Stover, finished third in their pool, going 2-2, including a loss to the eventual champions.
“I had a great time,” added Theesfield, who competed in the national tournament last year with a different partner. “Especially because it wasn’t nearly as hot.”
It was the final tournament of a successful summer that saw Aspenson and Theesfield win multiple competitions, including the July 12 Powerbar event.
In all, the team medaled in six of the eight tournaments they competed in and won more events than any other team in the North Texas region 18-and-under division.
It was also the duo’s first summer playing together and just their second season playing beach volleyball.
“We’re just good friends that have played volleyball together,” Theesfield said. “We decided to team up and play beach and we compliment each other well.”
The USA beach volleyball national team was so impressed with the performances of Aspenson and Theesfield, as well as other beach volleyball players from the area, that they considering holding tryouts for the national team in Texas next season, as well as the tryout sites of California and Florida.
In addition to joining forces for beach volleyball and playing on Flower Mound’s high school team, the tandem was part of the 900 Volleyball Club from Colleyville, which competed in the Junior Olympic National Championships in Miami last month.
The duo conceded it’s not easy switching from indoor to beach volleyball and back to indoor for high school within two months time.
“The biggest difference is that it is a lot harder to move around because of the sand,” Theesfield said. “You have to be in the right spot and have to read where the ball is headed. It’s a lot more instinctive. I also think it is more relaxed outdoors because there aren’t as many people counting on you to perform. If you happen to mess up, you are just letting down one person and not a whole team.”
“Beach is so fun, but the basic strategy seems kind of mean,” Aspenson had previously stated. “The idea is to pick out the weaker person on the other team and serve to them all the time so that person has to handle the ball two out of the three hits.”
But, after more experience Aspenson has adjusted to the idea.
“I don’t have a problem trying to pick on someone anymore,” she said.
Theesfield and Aspenson also said the transition was made easier by coach Stover.
“He’s a great coach,” they said. “He was able to make us a quicker and really helped us read the shots better.”
Now the tandem will shift their focus back to indoor volleyball as the Lady Jaguars gear up for a competitive season in District 6-5A.
Theesfield is an outside hitter with a solid defensive game, while Aspenson, or “Little Hammer” as Theesfield sometimes calls her, spends time on the back row as a defensive specialist/libero.
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