8th Grade Spring Training Team Rosters      

   Express Training Home   

The 8th grade tryout is traditionally our smallest tryout group and this session is no exception.  We have twice as many players in the 6th and 7th grades as we do in the 8th grade.  This means that we will not be cutting any players from Monday's tryout and that is both good for you and challenging for the instructors.  Thankfully, both of the 8th grade coaches are varsity High School Coaches who have great volleyball resumes and are ready to teach your player.  It is up to each of the players to buy in to the training and become better athletes.  Our expectations for these groups will be the same as a coach trying to field a freshman volleyball team.  We expect all players to try and keep up but we realize that it may be necessary to split players off who are struggling and work more on individual skills with them.  This will also allow the larger group to move forward in the team periods.  Your 8th grade trainers are accomplished coaches who have bought in to our mission of making better volleyball players outside the JO and school season.  Sports Express is lucky to have them as a part of this activity.

Coach Mike Seibert is the Varsity assistant at Lakota West High School and has been the Varsity Head Coach at both Ursuline Academy and Norwood High School.  Mike has a State Championship title under his belt and is a member of the SWOVCA Hall of Fame.  Mike will be assisted by Kelly Calvi a senior Libero from Lakota West High School.

Coach Erin Iceman is the Varsity Head Coach at Lakota East High School and a JO coach at Cincy Classics.  Erin is a standout player who played her college volleyball at Penn State University and graduated with a degree in Education.  Erin will be assisted by Sarah Berling an all-around player from Lakota East High School who has been recovering from a knee injury during the past year.

Since we have 4 open spots, we are going to wait to split the groups until next week.  We will allow four 7th grade players from Tuesdays tryout to move up to the 8th grade group.  All players should plan on being at practice Monday, March 17th at 4:40.  We will be doing more evaluating at that 1st practice and we may move players in and out of each group as we proceed to resolve OHSAA rules issues or other practice needs.  7th and 8th grade teams will be finalized by the beginning of week 3.  They will all scrimmage each other and may share players for drill purposes (ie setters training together).

What to do now:  Have your daughter at the 1st practice on Monday, March 17th at 4:40.  If you are going to miss a practice it is not necessary to call but we'd like to hear from you if you must miss more than 1 in a row.  We take teams in 16 player groups because we know players will be sick or have other commitments from time to time.  We'd like to have at least 12-14 players at each practice for scrimmage and drill purposes.  Players will receive team shirts during week 2.  The following players still need to send a check (made payable to Sports Express for $275) to practice on Monday:  Frey, O'Connell, Egan.