For about 45 minutes Sunday night, the Thunder’s Kelly Kennedy could sympathize a bit with Britney Spears.
The 6-foot-4-inch middle blocker from Barrington was swarmed by fans in search of autographs following her team’s 25-22, 25-19, 25-23 victory over the St. Louis Quest in the franchise’s United States Pro Volleyball League home opener at St. Xavier’s Shannon Center in Chicago.
In fact, all of Kennedy’s teammates were overrun for close to an hour by the sellout crowd of 2,407, made up in large part by the league’s target audience of 10-to-20-year-old females.
“It was nice to finally get out here and meet the community,” Kennedy said, as she tried to move the 50 fans surrounding her to a table where she could sit and sign autographs on miniature volleyballs.
“I don’t know many of them now. But they will continue to come out and support us, and I guarantee I’ll start to recognize faces.”
Kennedy’s six kills and four blocks trailed only Kristee Porter’s 13 kills and 16 points in terms of the Thunder’s production. Terri Zemaitis-Boumans added six kills.
The 21-year-old Porter, who holds the UCLA and Pac-10 career kills record, drew some of the loudest crowd reactions during the 1-hour-40-minute match with her power-packed shots down the line.
Porter’s statistics and the Thunder improving to 1-1 ranked a distant second to the league’s attendance victory Sunday, completing the USPVL’s first week.
This inaugural 18-match season, which began Tuesday in Minnesota, culminates almost four years of work by league organizers such as co-founder Bill Kennedy, Kelly’s father.
“This is exactly what we expected,” Bill Kennedy explained of the sellout and fan reaction.
“We really hit big in our target market with family entertainment. There were a lot of father-daughter combinations in the stands, which is very important.”
Former Chicago high school sensations Nadia Edwards (Lincoln-Way High School) and Tracey Marshall (Downers Grove South) added to the local flavor as part of the St. Louis roster, although neither contributed much Sunday.
But their families watched their athletic dream fulfilled in a pro league that didn’t look possible when they played in the early ’90s.
They also were fair game for the myriad autograph seekers.
