Skills at premium in tourney

Anything can happen in a short championship tournament. At least that's what Cimarron-Memorial girls volleyball coach Danielle Ballard is telling herself.

With the Sunset Regional starting at 3 p.m. today when Palo Verde faces Bishop Gorman, Ballard doesn't have to do much convincing. She needn't look beyond last season, when Cimarron, the Northwest's No. 4 seed, beat the Southwest's top seed, Clark, in the first round.

"After last year, they see that anything is possible," Ballard said. "It will definitely show who wants it more -- especially because the teams up at the top think they already got it, and lower teams play like they have nothing to lose."

But Las Vegas coach Sue Thurman thinks underdog stories in high school volleyball are just fables.

"I don't think there's been any Cinderella stories here, and I've been coaching at Las Vegas for nine years," said Thurman, whose Wildcats play in the Sunrise Regional starting at 3 p.m. Wednesday with Chaparral facing Green Valley.

"In volleyball in this town, there have been the same really dominant teams from the beginning. There are teams that are almost there, but the teams on top rebuild and reload and keep themselves in position."

One way they do that is by sticking to the basics: perfect serve reception, last-second digs, ideal reads by an outside hitter at the net.

"Most good coaches would agree that serve-receive and serving are probably the two most important things of volleyball," said Coronado coach Blake Mitchell, whose team plays Rancho at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. "The teams that are going to end up winning this are not the best hitters and best blockers, but the best passers and servers. You have to control your offense and take teams out of theirs."

As much as Thurman loves having four players on the court taller than 5 feet 11 inches, she values -- and coaches -- the little things even more.

That is, not the spike that pounds the court inside the 10-foot line, but the one that grazes off an opposing blocker's right pinky, teetering on the net before falling for a point.

"A team can own the net, but if it can't get the ball to its setter, it's not going to own anything for very long," Thurman said. "There are a couple different shots we work on with our middle hitters -- Chenoa Rossi-Childress and Jennifer Gliddon -- and it's really been amazing to watch them grow. They're really starting to see where to hit it and how to go off the blockers. They're learning how to control the blockers.

"This season, there have been lots of goose-bump moments."

On the eve of the tournament, though, Ballard is looking for something else -- independence. She said her team's season turned around midway through the year against Palo Verde, in a match the team didn't win. But she saw a spark, one she hopes will rekindle over the next few days.

"We were struggling, and I just told them, 'Girls, I need something from you; I'm saying the same things over again,' " Ballard said. "I said, 'Don't look to me anymore. Look to your teammates.' They played that match and didn't look at us one time.

"At this point in the season, they know what to do. But they still need to look to each other."