Public Safety
Ciara Parker has always been something of a floor general.
Her mother and coach, Alaina Parker, remembers when her daughter was not yet old enough to play high school volleyball, but just a little girl watching from the sideline. She would watch both teams warm up and scribble in a notebook, letting her mom know if she thought the other team had done a better job.
"Time has absolutely flown by," Alaina says. "I still expect to see the little kid in the bleachers, stressing out so bad. The transformation has been amazing."
This season was arguably the senior setters most trying year yet. Only a few months before the season started, she learned in quick succession that McKenzie Willey and Stacy Benton, two of the programs top hitters, would be transferring out to other schools.
Willeys loss in particular was hard to swallow. The two had played volleyball together for almost a decade.
"We were like sisters," Ciara says. "It was definitely hard and kind of shocking at first. But I kind of made up my mind that this is the team we have, and were going to get through it. It was almost good we went our separate ways."
Losing some of the players she had relied on taught Ciara to call some of the lesser heralded players on the team to assume bigger roles. It was a learning experience for her and the rest of the team.
Snow Canyon would not go on to win its sixth straight championship. The Warriors fell in the title game to Morgan in a three-set sweep. Ciara was disappointed, but shes been able to get perspective on what the team did accomplish.
For a time, Ciara had only concentrated on what she couldve done herself. But she says now, there is no way Snow Canyon couldve gone to the finals without her teammates stepping up to the challenge.
"I was really blessed with the teammates I had," she says. "There was a chemistry there that was amazing. So many years, it seemed like everything came to us easy. No one expected us to be this good this year. We had t! o work f or it."
Twitter: @kylegoon