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2007 Main PageTeam PictureSchedule Roster Results Results (jv) Schedule (fr)Roster (fr) Results (fr) | ||||||
Maggie McGovern was selected to the All-District 2nd team.
Posted on Mon, Sep. 17, 2007 10:02 AM St. Teresa and Notre Dame de Sion battle each other on the volleyball court. By TOMMY LARSEN and PAIGE CORNWELL TeenStar Looking like a scene from “Braveheart,” an army of St. Teresa Academy girls costumed in suits of plastic armor shrouded by capes and accented by plastic swords and spears and dabs of war paint charged their school’s gym last Thursday afternoon.
Inside the gym waited the girls from Notre Dame de Sion, who were decked out in warrior gear of more recent vintage: camouflage fatigues, plastic helmets, aviator glasses, all set off by the fashionable yet potentially lethal duck whistles. This was war: the St. Teresa’s Academy versus Notre Dame de Sion volleyball game, the biggest game of their seasons. As the only two all-girls schools in the area, and without football teams, the girls turn their spirit toward the volleyball team. And STA went to state last year, making this game all the more important as it defends its title. Once inside the gym, the STA girls, whose costume theme was taken from the movie “300,” ran around the gym and rushed the bleachers. “Everyone went off and bought something; U.S. Toy was sold out,” STA junior Liz Howard said. “Give them nothing, but take from them everything!” screamed one STA senior inspired by “300.” The crowd of usually “prim and proper” young ladies erupted into a deafening chorus of combative shouts and chants that lasted throughout the game. There was even a Styrofoam head on a stick. And there was screaming. Lots and lots of screaming. Early in the match STA sophomore Maura Hinken proudly whispered, “I’m already starting to lose my voice. We like to go all out, we don’t have guys with big voices, so we have to compensate.” The STA-Sion rivalry is one of the fiercest in Kansas City. Some say it dates back almost a hundred years and has its origins in the fact that they remain the only two all-girls schools in the metropolitan area. “We know all the girls,” STA senior volleyball player Jessica Marak said. “We hang out with them on weekends, then during games we pretend we hate each other.” “If you go to St. Teresa, you don’t like Sion. If you go to Sion, you don’t like St. Teresa,” Brady Essman, a St. Teresa student, said. “It’s just the way it goes.” STA sophomore Anne Marie Whitehead put a different spin on the reasoning behind this intense rivalry by pointing out that both campuses are only a short distance from the only all-boys school in the area, Rockhurst High School, and therefore the girls’ competitiveness in sports naturally tends to step up in an effort to impress the “Rockhurst boys.” Because St. Teresa’s volleyball team won the Missouri state championship last year, Sion was viewed as the underdog in this year’s match. Throughout the game both squads battled aggressively and intensely. Like acrobats, they hurled themselves at the airborne ball as they spiked it over the net, almost playing a real-life version of “Pong.” In the stands the action matched that on the floor. Fans from both schools attempted to out-cheer the other, with STA students jeering, “We can’t see you!” and the camouflaged Sion girls retorting with “That’s our point!” And with every bump, set and spike, there were cheers. “Sion, Sion” was met by an “Ohh Ahh Ohh Ahh” with waving swords in the air. STA’s “Glory ... Glory ... Glory” was followed by a “Rock, Rock Steady” from Sion. | ||||||
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