Volleyball: Sterling’s Egan wins national title with club team

With so much success at the high school and club level the past several years, it’s almost become a rite of passage for Sterling volleyball players to win national championships in the offseason.

Sterling senior Grace Egan added her name to that list earlier this month, winning the USA Volleyball 17 Open Division National Championship on July 4 in Indianapolis.

Playing with 1st Alliance Volleyball Club out of the suburbs, Egan and her 17 Gold squad won the title in a bracket featuring the 36 top club teams at that level in the country.

“I knew we were becoming a stronger team, but even at the end, I would say it was shocking,” Egan said. “The last point of the championship, I was thinking, ‘Did this actually just happen? We just won a national championship … seriously!?’ We were all really excited.”

Egan joins former Golden Warriors Lexi Rodriguez, Brooklyn Borum and Bree Borum as national champions in club volleyball.

An Ohio State commit, Egan is one of several players on the 17 Gold team who will be playing Division I volleyball in college. She said the team’s libero is going to Northwestern, and the setter to Memphis, among others.

“We’re all going to big-time schools, everyone committed Division I, but when we started in December, we really didn’t know what the team would turn out to be,” she said. “By the time we got to the end of June, we all really wanted all the hard work we had put in since December to pay off.

“We came in to play hard, and everybody was really dedicated and ready to compete at a really high level. Everyone wants to come in and play good volleyball, and that pushes your teammates to make each other better.”

She said that while a national championship never really entered her thoughts, she realized during the qualifying tournaments she and her team played in that the squad was coming together and firing on all cylinders.

“We just started playing well against good teams, and I really recognized how good we were when we were playing in the qualifiers,” Egan said. “We had to qualify to get into the national tournament – we qualified for it three times, actually – and we won every single game in the first qualifier, didn’t drop a set, and I thought, ‘Wow, this team is something special.’”

1st Alliance went 4-1 in pool play at the USA National Championship, winning nine of the 11 sets it played. It then split a pair of matches on Day 3 before winning a challenge match 25-13, 25-18. On July 4, 1st Alliance rolled through the Gold Medal bracket, winning all three matches in straight sets to claim the crown.

A 25-21, 25-14 quarterfinal win over Premier Nebraska 17 Gold was followed by a 25-23, 25-15 win over COAST 17-1 out of San Diego in the semifinals. The title tilt was a 25-20, 25-20 win over Minnesota Select 17-1.

“We had seen Minnesota Select in qualifiers to get to this tournament, and we beat them in two sets, so we knew what we were doing and what to expect,” Egan said. “Both teams had a hard time getting any momentum. After playing the top teams in the country for four days, we were both whipped, just really tired.

“The match went back and forth, and we didn’t go on long runs like we wanted to, but we made it work and pulled it out.”

For the tournament, 1st Alliance 17 Gold finished 9-2, winning 20 of its 24 sets. Egan was happy with the way she played, but noted that at the end, it was a battle of attrition for everybody on both teams.

“I played good, but at the end of a four-day tournament, you’re whipped, basically as tired as you can be,” she said. “But I had my team there for me, and we all picked each other up, got each other excited.

“It doesn’t matter how tired you are, once you’re in the championship bracket, you’ve got to shake it up and get going, just keep pushing through.”

Egan said she’s now eager to turn her attention to her final high school season in Sterling, and is excited at the prospect of the Golden Warriors bringing back all but one player from a regional championship team in 2021.