Mike DiBenedetto will do almost anything to build a successful volleyball program.
The Morgan Park coach has prodded his players to make a year-round commitment to the sport, attended clinics and scrutinized books and tapes. He has even sneaked a peek at another team’s practice.
DiBenedetto also has written letters, lots of letters, to the top volleyball programs on the Southwest Side and nearby suburbs, all but begging their coaches to schedule his team.
He started his direct-mail campaign about five years ago, while he was still Morgan Park’s frosh-soph volleyball coach, and he continued it after taking over as head coach last season.
“I’d send a hundred letters a year, and maybe one school would respond,” he said. “Schools were already booked, or they didn’t think we’d give them much competition.”
It was easy to understand why. Not once had a Public League team won a state quarterfinal match in the 27 years that the league’s champion received an automatic berth in the Elite Eight. In 2001, the last year of the automatic berth, Mather lost to Normal Community 15-2, 15-3.
Slowly, however, DiBenedetto’s persistence paid off. This season Morgan Park has opened against three quality opponents: Andrew, Mother McAuley and Marist.
The result has been predictable, but never has a 0-3 record felt so triumphant. In a 25-13, 25-17 loss at Marist on Wednesday, for example, the blocking and spiking of track star Alexandria Anderson and Janel James kept Morgan Park within 19-15 in the second game before Marist closed out the match.
“We made a few mistakes here and there, but we played together and hustled until the end,” James said. “When we play these schools, we learn what we need to do and can make the corrections.”
The results had been similar in a 25-21, 25-15 loss at Andrew and a 25-14, 25-17 loss at then No. 2-ranked McAuley, which has won 12 state titles.
DiBenedetto had visited McAuley under different circumstances a year earlier, arriving early for a coach’s meeting and peering through a gym window at a Mighty Macs practice for any ideas he could steal.
DiBenedetto has been playing catch-up since he became Morgan Park’s frosh-soph coach a dozen years ago with no experience in the sport.
“All I knew was bump, set, spike,” he said.
As an Oak Lawn and Eastern Illinois baseball player, though, he had picked up a coaching philosophy centered on discipline and commitment, and he saw a chance to make the most of it in 2001 when a talented group of freshmen arrived at Morgan Park.
Besides Anderson and James, they included Vanessa Davis, Shanika Hubbard, Bridget Kiernan and Erin Regan. As sophomores, five of them started on a team that won the Public League varsity title.
Last year they were 19-6 and did well enough in a regional title game loss to highly regarded Stagg to get some responses to their coach’s letters.
Besides talent, what made this group special was their willingness to play club volleyball and participate in off-season weightlifting and conditioning.
“I told them if they wanted to be good they had to do those things,” DiBenedetto said. “I gave the same speech every year, but this group responded.”
The only starter who has not played club ball is Anderson, who understandably focuses on track. Last spring the sprinter-long jumper became the first Class AA athlete to win four individual gold medals in an Illinois state track meet. She was almost as dominant on the summer track circuit, helping a U.S. 1,600-meter relay set a world junior record and win a world title.
It would be hard to fault Anderson if she skipped volleyball for fall track conditioning, but she enjoys the sport too much to leave it quite yet. What she seems to enjoy most is evading the bright spotlight that follows her around in track.
“I love volleyball because it’s a team sport,” she said. “Track is a team sport, but unless you’re in a relay it’s just you out there in your lane.”
DiBenedetto contends that Anderson would be a Division I college volleyball prospect if she specialized in the sport.
“When she’s on it’s very hard to block her and hard to get the ball by her,” he said. “If she played club volleyball against good competition, she could be really scary.”
Next year may be scary for DiBenedetto, eight of whose top nine players are seniors. He’s hopeful that seeing the likes of McAuley and Marist will spark his underclassmen to make the commitment his seniors have.
“I’m hoping it rubs off on them and makes them realize playing club volleyball and making all these sacrifices is what it takes if we want to keep making a schedule like this,” he said.
The seniors, however, want to leave more of a legacy than that. Their goal at minimum is a regional title and some respect for Public League volleyball.
“That’s definitely what we’re working for,” James said. “We’re not just thinking of the Public League title. We have bigger dreams.
“We want to make a name for Public League volleyball and show it’s not just bump over the net, the way most people think it is.”
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btemkin@tribune.com
