SEATTLE, WA - July 31, 2007
WVBA International Team will be departing Belo Horizonte, Brazil for the long trip home to the USA Tuesday afternoon. Their trip takes them through Sao Paulo and Lima, Peru before landing in Los Angeles early Wednesday morning.

The 3rd Minas Tênis Copa Internacional came to a close on Sunday with an exciting 5-set final leaving Minas Tênis Clube's MTC team as the winner over Fluminense of Rio de Janeiro. The WVBA Intl. team was competitive with every team but could not find a way to win against 5 of their 6 opponents. They finished 6th overall after a 3-set loss to MacKenzie on Sunday morning.

All seven WVBA teams have finished their seasons now with the Mizuno 17 team's final match at JOs last Sunday. Mizuno 18-Red finished their season at the Emerald City Classic on Memorial Day while the remaining six teams played their last matches at either the Volleyball Festival in Reno or Junior Olympics in Minneapolis.

Junior Olympics
WVBA Mizuno 16 left Minneapolis with some hardware by finishing 3rd overall in the National Division of the USAV Junior Olympic National Championship.

The Academy 16s finished 3rd after earning a sweet 3-set victory over local powerhouse Northern Lights 16 of Minneapolis on Friday night to get into the 8-team Gold Division.

On Saturday morning Mizuno 16 cruised past Coast 16 Chad of San Diego in two sets (25-17, 25-14) in the quarter finals. Their run at a national title finally ended when they ran into a red hot Club Fusion 16 Black team from Chicago.


#21 OH Cailin Fellows, #24 OH Kylin Munoz and #19 S Kerry Clavadetscher

Three Mizuno 16 players were named All Americans in recongition of their outstanding performances over the four day tournament.

Outside Hitters Kylin Munoz and Cailin Fellows along with Setter Kerry Clavadetscher received prestigious All-tournament team honors.

The road to the semi-finals was not without a few obstacles however. Their biggest obstacle came on day 2 when WVBA 16s dropped their first set to Kaepa Oregon Juniors. The second set only got worse for the Academy and soon they found themselves deep in a hole trailing 17-24. Oregon Juniors served wide to give Janelle Chow a chance to serve while Oregon Juniors would have 7 match point opportunities. Janelle focused on the area called by assistant coach Tina Brennan and served the next five points to bring the Academy team within a point at 23-24.

On the next serve Cailin Fellows and Jamie McDonald stuff-blocked the Oregon Juniors right-side attack to bring the score to 24-24 and force a deuce game. They went to the red set again and Fellows and McDonald were waiting with another stuff block to give the Academy the 25-24 advantage. They set the red set one more time only to have the hitter hit into the net for the final point to even the match. A loss to Oregon Juniors would have dropped the Academy 16s into the bottom half with the highest possible finish of 25th.

Mizuno 16 went on to win the third game 15-9 to finish first in their pool. They finished 2nd in their next pool to set up a very intense crossover match against Northern Lights on Friday night. Kylin Munoz led the Academy sophomores to victory in three sets with 19 kills and only 2 errors on 36 swings. This put them into the Gold Bracket for Saturday morning.

Mizuno 17 finished 35th out of 48 teams in the National Division.

Mizuno 15 won their flight to finish 33rd out of 48 teams in the American Division.

Mizuno 13 was the first ever 13s team from WVBA to qualify for JOs and they finished 39th out of 48 teams in the National Division.

Congratulations to all four WVBA teams that finished their season at Junior Olympics.

JOs results are posted at the tournament website.

Volleyball Festival
WVBA Mizuno 18 finished a very respectable 7th overall out of 103 18s teams. The Academy 18s came into the tournament holding the 9th seed overall.

They won their initial pool Monday and then were upset in a crossover match with USA Michigan. They dropped to the 24th seed where started play Tuesday morning. They dropped their first match in the morning against #8 Golden West 18 Nike, and then went used all three games to defeat both #28 Laguna Beach 18 Cory and #12 Sudden Impact 18 Tsunami. This gave the Academy 18s the #12 overall seed going into Wednesday's qualifying brackets.

They continued to climb into the Championship bracket. After dropping a match to Sport Shack, WVBA 18s beat SMBC 18 Nabil to take over the #6 seed. They dropped their next match to Golden West to drop into the #7 seed where they finished with a victory over Rancho Valley to end their season. This 7th place finish at Festival equals the Academy's prior highest finish when coach Shannon Pratt led our 16s team to the same placement a couple of years ago.

Mizuno 14 had a great pool on Tuesday with #1 overall seed Avoli-Llaneras from Puerto Rico, #10 Beach Cities Gold, and #12 Portland 14 Red. After dropping a heartbreaking 3-set match to the Puerto Ricans (25-19, 19-25, 13-15) Mizuno 14 ended their pool in 4th. They went into the Wednesday qualifying bracket with some momentum and the #20 seed.

After their first win over Bakersfield WVBA 14s faced rival Nike NW Air/Elite from Gresham, OR. A tough 3-set loss to Nike knocked the 14s off track and they weren't able to recover for the next two matches as they watched their seed drop to 36 and then to 46 after losses to Absolute and Solana Beach. They ended with wins in their final bracket to finish 46th out of 147 teams.

Volleyball Festival results are posted on the Festival results website.

WVBA Grass Tournament
Grass tournament cancelled for 8/4/07.

WVBA will host one grass doubles tournament in August for juniors.

The tournament will be held on August 18th. The tournament will be held at the beautiful grass of the Edmonds Home School Resource Center (the Old Edmonds-Woodway HS). The cost is $10 for single players or $20 per doubles team.

We will have two age divisions, 16-18 and 15 & Under. Check-in begins at 8:30 with play starting at 9:00am. We will pair up any singles that don't have partners. You must be a current USAV member to play. Click here to download a registration form.

Please contact Jackie if you have any questions.

WVBA International Team
WVBA International Team will be leaving for Brazil on Wednesday. They will have three practices before leaving and had their first practice last night.

The team is very strong and will be competitive with the Brazilian teams at the 3rd Copa Minas Internacional tournament in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. On the way to Belo Horizonte the Academy team will stop in Rio to spend a couple of days at the beach.

We will be posting photos from our trip as time and Internet access allows. To follow along with our team in South America, watch the 2007 Brasil trip photo gallery.