Best of the best: Strasburg star got her start in Guam

By Jeremy Stafford - jstafford@nvdaily.com

STRASBURG -- It all started in Guam, the largest tropical island in an archipelago that speckles the Pacific Ocean, just east of Indonesia. More than half of Guam's population comprises the indigenous Chamorro people, many of which inhabit the shack-like houses scattered about the impoverished island.

But there's a road that stretches through a row of well-constructed single-family homes, reminiscent of a quaint American neighborhood. And in the backyard of one of those homes, Jaclyn Ayers used to toss a softball around with her family.

Aside from lapping about in the family pool or occasionally shooting a bow and arrow, playing catch with her parents and sister in Guam was the limit of Ayers' early exposure to sports.

"I never got into anything there until I came [to Strasburg] in sixth grade," Ayers said.

"Really, all we did was go outside and throw the softball around. That was pretty much the extent of anything."

But that limited experience was all Ayers needed to set the foundation for what would soon become a brilliant, though still incomplete, career in high school athletics.

"She's a unique athlete," said Strasburg volleyball and softball coach Suzanne Mathias, whose 2008 volleyball team reached the state title game behind Ayers. "Obviously she can play three sports, and excels in all three.

"She's a hard worker, she's a good kid, just the total package as far as an athlete, and you'd like to have 12 of her with her hustle and her attitude."

Ayers, The Northern Virginia Daily's Girls Athlete of the Year, competes in volleyball, basketball and softball, and though she's too humble to do so willingly, she can name most of the awards she's collected over the last nine months: All-state first team in volleyball, Bull Run District Volleyball Player of the Year, Region B honorable mention in basketball, Region B second-team in softball, and several others.

But what's perhaps most astonishing is that Ayers didn't start playing volleyball -- the sport she's had arguably the most success in -- until the eighth grade, when she bought a volleyball because the sport seemed fun.

The summer before tryouts, Ayers used to stand below the wooden deck that wraps around her house, and her mother would drop the new volleyball down to her outstretched forearms. Ayers would bounce the ball back up to her mom, and the process would repeat, over and over again; the drill wasn't a fascinating one and it didn't turn Ayers into the versatile volleyball player she's become, but it was just enough to get her on Mathias' JV team as an eighth-grader that fall.

It took only four more seasons for Ayers to be recognized as one of the best volleyball players in the state as a junior.

"She has good hands, and she can set the ball, but at the same time she can turn around and kill the ball -- she has the best of both worlds," Mathias said. "She can be the one that's setting up the attack, or she can be the attacker, so that's one definite way that she's unique.

"I mean, not very many kids can do both roles and be good at it."

Ayers' experience in basketball wasn't much different.

She first played organized basketball in the sixth grade, and admits that she couldn't even make a layup, let alone set up an effective pick and roll. So her dad bought the family a basketball hoop for Christmas, and Ayers fell in love with yet another sport.

She made her school's eighth-grade team as a seventh-grader, and though she rarely played, Strasburg varsity coach Joel Morgan used to pull her aside and teach her the fundamentals of the game. In her junior season, Ayers became Morgan's stingiest defender and was often marked against the opposing team's most skilled dribbler. She averaged a team-high 12.3 points per game as the Rams tore through the Bull Run District and made it to the Region B, Division 2 semifinal game.

But none of that success fueled her love for a single sport the way throwing around that leather ball in Guam fueled her love for softball. Tucked away on the crown of Oceania, isolated from the rest of the world, where even youth sports have become so competitive that kids have burned out early in their careers, Ayers learned the game of softball the way sports should be learned.

Again, playing catch with her family wasn't anything spectacular; Ayers didn't learn to field grounders or make a catch over her shoulder or turn a double play. Instead, she learned to take sports for what they are: Games between athletes of varying degrees who play to have fun.

Later in her career, Ayers did learn how to track down those fly balls that Mathias thought were uncatchable. Later in her career, Ayers did learn how to bat .519, smack six doubles and lead the Rams to the Region B quarterfinals.

But her experience in Guam was about nothing more than falling in love with the game; and the accolades that soon followed were just the fortunate reward of playing with her heart.

"I'm very happy, very fortunate," Ayers said. "My coaches, they pushed for that and they pushed for me, and I thank them greatly.

"I'm very fortunate for that."