A quick study: Smoot made smooth transition to volleyball

By Jeremy Stafford -- jstafford@nvdaily.com

STRASBURG -- An eighth-grade girl sits down at her father's side.

She's indecisive, perhaps a bit confused; he's intent, and sees an endless sky of potential in his daughter's eyes. He asks if she's going to try out for the Strasburg junior varsity volleyball team, and she says she isn't sure.

"What do you remember most about basketball?" the father asks the daughter. "What do you love the most?"

"Being with my teammates," the girl said. She'd played basketball since she was in the second grade, and to this day, it's her favorite sport.

"Why would you not try that in another sport?" the father suggests. His point is clear, and difficult to refute. And so not too long after, without any experience playing volleyball, Jenna Smoot made the Strasburg junior varsity team, and in doing so, perhaps set a new bar for Strasburg athletics.

***

Timidly, Smoot stepped onto Strasburg's hardwood court for one of many open-gym sessions intended for anyone and everyone interested in playing volleyball for the Rams. It was hard for her to summon the courage to play with older, more experienced girls -- watching such greats as Kaitlin Smoot and Katie Baker setting and killing, killing and setting. Baker and Kaitlin Smoot: The audacious legends of Strasburg volleyball, who played club ball in the off-season, and then chewed up and spit out the high school competition while in-season.

They were all a family, and though Jenna Smoot was neighbors with Baker and friends with Kaitlin Smoot, she was still the outsider who'd never played a day in her life.

"I was so intimidated, oh my gosh," Smoot laughed. "It was scary."

After Smoot made junior varsity, though, she became less intimidated. In the eighth grade she played with current teammates Jaclyn Ayers and Stephanie Conde, and as she gradually developed a family with her teammates, she slowly learned the fundamentals of hitting, though she admits she didn't yet "know where the ball was going."

"I didn't know any arm motions -- nothing," she said. "I just hoped the ball went over, and it went over hard enough to get a point."

In the ninth grade, Smoot, Ayers and Conde won the Bull Run junior-varsity championship for the Rams.

But Smoot's winning was far from over.

In her sophomore year, Smoot made Strasburg volleyball coach Suzanne Mathias' varsity team, and joined Baker and Kaitlin Smoot in what would become the duo's final, but finest, season. The Rams went a perfect 28-0, defeating Gate City in the Group A state championship. Baker was named the state player of the year, and Kaitlin Smoot joined her as a first-team all-state selection.

That was the year Jenna Smoot (180 kills) first bit into the sweet, tantalizing marrow of the varsity postseason. As a sophomore, she was talented enough to be relied upon when Baker hit a wall, and young enough for the experience of winning the 2007 state championship to benefit the Rams for years to come.

***

It's hard to say what Strasburg expected of itself coming off that state championship. By 2008, the days of Kaitlin Smoot and Baker were long gone, like the crinkled leaves of an autumn tree, blown far away in a November breeze. In all, seven girls were lost to graduation that season, while Jenna Smoot, Conde and seniors Bethany Doman and Rebecca Coffman returned. Ayers was called up from jayvee to rejoin Smoot, as was Lauran Agnew, who had come to Strasburg the year before.

Of course Mathias expected a lot from her girls, but 2008 was a new year, and the Rams were a new team. Could they really hope to make it back to the state final?

The Rams hoped, and the Rams returned.

Smoot fired off 185 kills and 127 blocks for the season, while Ayers notched 130 kills.

Strasburg returned to the state final, losing to Gate City in three sets. For some the run was unexpected, for others, it was merely another great chapter in the storied history Strasburg athletics.

But for Smoot, the sting of the loss hurt more than the glory of the win the year prior.

"I just remember how good it felt to win states," Smoot said. "But what I remember even more was how bad it felt to turn around a year later -- the excitement you feel after winning a state championship can't even begin to fix how bad it hurts when you lose one."

And so Smoot fights so that her teammates, her family away from her family, might get that grand, majestic feeling of winning a title to course through them.

"She knows what's at stake," Mathias said. "I mean, they all know what's at stake, but she and Steph [Conde] have been there, they've experienced it, so they know they gotta take the whole team to the next level."

***

The growth of Smoot in the last five years is evident: From that timid eighth grader, struggling at her father's side to decide if she could play volleyball, to the undisputed leader of a team coming off a state final appearance.

"Oh my god, I love it," Ayers said of playing with Smoot. "[She's our] go-to player all the time -- whenever we're down, every point I try to get to Jenna [Smoot], no matter what.

"Because I know if we're in a slump, every time she comes in, it's always right to her ... I'll set her up four, five times in a row."

But Smoot has become more than a hammer on the front row and more than a sure point. She is a leader and a motivator; she's the Rams' spirit and their fire. After Strasburg dropped its first match of the season to Sherando, Smoot and the Rams won their next 21 matches, winning the Bull Run District regular season and the district tournament. After the Rams were taken to five sets by Madison County and Clarke County in the final two matches of the regular season, Smoot made sure this past Saturday, in the district final, her team, her family, understood the importance of scraping and clawing for every postseason point.

"On Saturday I thought that she showed a determination there that they weren't gonna be beat [at home]," Mathias said. "She got her teammates up before the game -- I mean in the locker room, out here [in the gym], I heard her over everyone else.

"And she does that most of the time, but it was just a whole different level on Saturday."

Indeed, Smoot's on-the-court presence has become so invaluable, so irreplaceable, that Mathias has, on occasion this season, left her to play on the back row rather than having her rotate off as Smoot normally does.

"I need her voice on the floor, and I need her leadership out there," Mathias explained.

But as Strasburg delves further and further into the depths of the postseason, playing Stonewall Jackson tonight in the Region B quarterfinals, it's evident that all Smoot truly needs are her teammates, her friends, her family away from her family.

And as Ayers, Conde, Agnew and the rest tossed a volleyball back and forth through that purple gym at Strasburg High School, a confident Smoot, who's made all the use of her endless sky of potential, raised her eyes toward them, set her hands on her hips, and smiled.

"I can't say enough about the group of girls that I'm surrounded with every day at practice," she said. "I'm blessed, I really am, because I love them. They are my family away from my family.

"And to have one last shot with them really, really means a lot to me ... and I couldn't ask for a better group to give it one last shot with."