GNAC Sports

Pain Doesn't Slow Down Viking Libero Schneider

By Larry Henry
Special to The Everett Herald

BELLINGHAM - She was hurting then.

And now, two years later, the pain still lingers. But she goes on playing.

Sit down, let it heal? You must be joking.

It would take more than a groin pull to get Western Washington University's Courtney Schneider off the floor during a volleyball match. She didn't even come out the day she suffered the injury two years ago.

"No, of course not," laughs her coach, Diane Flick, inferring by her tone of voice that it was a ridiculous question to ask. "You could tell it kind of hurt her but we were at about 15-15 and towards the end of the game and there's no way she would pull herself out. In fact, she probably wanted more balls to be hit at her."

The opponent that day was defending NCAA Division II national champion Barry University from Miami Shores, Fla.

The play that caused Schneider to get injured is still etched indelibly in the mind of her coach.

"We talk about the instant in competition when there's going to be a play that you make, a play that you practice so that you can do it right every single time, a play that can make or break it for us in a match and she made it in the fifth (and final) game with a dig," Flick said, alluding to a play that redirects the attack (shot) just before it hits the floor. "That was a nice momentum swing for us because we were able to get that point."

Schneider made the play with a move that her coach had never seen her make before. She almost did a split, with her right leg extended in front of her and her left leg extended behind her.

"She went to a position to get as low as possible and her body wasn't used to making that move and you could tell it hurt her groin," Flick said.

The severity of the injury wasn't known until after the match. That Schneider stayed in the game is a testament to her tenacity, because a groin pull is very painful. With treatment, a player can live with it. But unless she takes time off, it isn't going to heal.

Schneider treated it and played on. And pulled it again last season.

Now a new season has begun. Her final season of collegiate volleyball.

"I haven't pulled it yet," she said. "It's just sore, which is good."

She was sitting in the gym after practice, a couple of days before the Vikings opened the season in a tournament at Tampa, Fla.

That she was still upright seemed a miracle. In the last 30 minutes of practice, she had ended up on the floor a half-dozen times going for the ball.

"We teach them a lot of techniques so that they can go as hard and as fast as they possibly can but not kill themselves," said Flick, who was a standout player at the University of Washington in the late 1980s and early '90s before taking over as Viking head coach in 2000.

Schneider, a defensive specialist or libero, as the position is known, went as hard and as fast as she could from the moment she joined the Vikings as a freshman and began making an impact in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC).

Just months out of Snohomish High School, she wasted no time in establishing herself as a collegiate player, leading the GNAC in digs with 532, just 10 short of the school record, and walking away with Freshman of the Year honors.

As a junior last year she was a third-team All-American, leading the NCAA Division II in digs with 666 or 7.66 per game. She started this season with the Western career record for digs with 1,844, only 164 shy of the GNAC record. She then broke the GNAC mark the second week of the season and now has 2,085 digs in her four-year career, ranking her 15th nationally in NCAA Division II.

And to think, she didn't even take up the sport until her junior year in high school, earning all-Western Conference first-team honors her final two years. Before that, she had been a superb soccer player, but gave up that sport when she found volleyball more to her liking.

She also played basketball at one time, and her father, Terry, still rates that as her best sport. "Good athletes could probably do any sport," he said. "She was all-conference in soccer (her sophomore year) then becomes all-conference in volleyball (her junior year)."

What his daughter has besides athletic skills is what some have referred to as sports I.Q. "She understands the game," he said.

And in understanding the game, she has a remarkable ability to anticipate where the ball is going to go. Sometimes she amazes even her coach.

"There are times when she'll pick up a ball and I'll say, 'How'd you know it was going to go there?'" Flick remarked. "Her answer is: 'I don't know.'

"She may not be able to verbalize why she read what she read but she makes the right read. Her mental game is great."

Call it instinct.

"Absolutely," Flick affirmed.

Some are born with it.

Not that Schneider doesn't study the game. She does. Studies it by playing it, her coach said. And by keeping her ears open. "There are not a lot of times when I'm communicating with another person that she's not listening in on my conversation and receving passive feedback that way," Flick said.

"She wants to know every aspect of the game because knowing what I'm telling the hitter means she knows how to defend the hitter."

Schneider is respected throughout the GNAC. When league coaches asked Flick before the season started if she expected to lose any games — the Vikings were picked to win the league title — she gave the obvious reply: "Well, I don't know, we have to play them."

To which they often responded, "Yes, but you have Courtney, so there aren't going to be many balls hit the floor."

"That," Flick concluded, "is saying a lot for Courtney."

For the second year in a row, Schneider is a team co-captain, an honor she earned not only for her leadership on the court, but off the court. "She's a good student, a good community member, she's someone you would want your daughter or son to hang out with because she would have them in a safe situation all the time," Flick said. "She makes good choices and helps others make good choices."

And she wants to help any way she can to make her teammates better so that the Vikings can go deep into the NCAA playoffs. "My big thing is what can I do when I'm not touching the ball," she said. "Not that I don't need help. I need a lot."

She had been anxious to get the GNAC career record for digs behind her - "It was talked about a lot," she said - so that she could concentrate on what is most important to her: "The only line on the stats sheet that matters to her is the middle one which has the scores," her coach said. "I think she wanted to get that monkey off her back so that everyone would leave it alone."

And as for playing with pain, that isn't going to change.

"A lot of people don't like to hit the floor," Schneider said. "I just love it. I just like to go."

As her father said, "She's never been a crier."

As in baseball, there is no crying in volleyball.