By Jack Williams
Kyleen Bell was speaking for all the members of the Georgia Tech volleyball team when she said, “We want rings!” And believe me, she wasn’t talking about the kind that go on the third finger, left hand.
Bell was referring to the rings that you get when you win an Atlantic Coast Conference championship and qualify for a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
The Yellow Jacket volleyballers are well on their way to doing just that. Tech currently rides an eight-match winning streak, has a 17-4 overall record and has vaulted into first place in the ACC race with a 7-1 mark and a slight statistical edge over North Carolina.
Coach Shelton Collier’s Jackets face crucial home tests this weekend, meeting Wake Forest Friday night and Duke on Saturday. Both contests are scheduled for O’Keefe Gymnasium, beginning at 7 p.m.
Bell, a junior middle blocker from Rocklin, Calif., is one big reason why the Jackets are enjoying such an outstanding year. Ky, as she is called by her teammates and coaches, has been the ACC Player of the Week twice this season. In 21 contests, she leads the Tech team in kills with 293 and in blocks with 80. She also tops the ACC in hitting percentage at .380. Bell had a career-high 27 kills against North Carolina and matched her career best 10 blocks against North Carolina State.
A three-sport star (volleyball, basketball and track) in high school, Bell came all the way across the country to specialize in her favorite sport on the Tech campus. How did she manage to choose Tech?
“Georgia Tech is good at recruiting,” she said, smiling. “Coach Collier saw me in a club tournament at Las Vegas and that led to an offer to come here.”
Bell had numerous scholarship offers and strongly considered – in addition to Tech – Wisconsin, Colorado, Oregon State and Reno (Nevada), a school close to her California home. “Actually, academics played a large part in my decision,” she said. “Tech has an outstanding academic reputation, and that’s really why I came here.”
She says there is no real secret behind Tech’s sudden success in volleyball. “We have better players,” she said. “The freshman class that was brought in this year is much better, for example, than the one when I enrolled.”
Bell points to two newcomers in particular, true freshman Kele Eveland, a powerful performer at setter, and Enkeleida Mabry, a talented rightside hitter who originally hailed from Albania and transferred to Tech from Temple University.
Mabry is one of five European players who are making their mark in Tech volleyball. The others are team star Maja Pachale, a hitter from Schwerin, Germany; Dore Pap, a hitter from Budapest, Hungary; Geeske Banck, a hitter from Moekeberg, Germany; and Alexandria Preiss, a blocker from Berlin, Germany.
Bell says the Europeans have blended in extremely well with the other Tech players. “Girls 18 and 19 years old are the same,” Bell said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from. Maja has been my roommate, and we are sisters even though she grew up in Germany and I grew up in California. The European players have their little quirks, like mis-pronouncing English words sometimes. But they are great to be around.”
In sizing up Tech’s success, Bell also points to the two new assistants on Collier’s staff, Bond Shymansky and Shannon Tuttle. “They have been a big help to the players on the team,” Bell said. “If I’m not hitting the ball properly, they take me aside and get me back on track. They also have made a difference in motivation and spirit.”
Tech has a special reason to look ahead to the weekend battles with Wake Forest and Duke. It was back-to-back victories against those two teams on the road that proved to be the turning point for the Jackets.
“All of a sudden, everything clicked in those games,” she said. “The ACC, as a whole, is much tougher now than when I first came to Tech. All the teams are bringing in better players.”
Bell says she, too, has become a better player in her time at Tech. One big reason was her participation on the USA Junior National Team in World Championship competition between her freshman and sophomore seasons.
“It was a humbling experience, playing volleyball at that level,” she said. “That experience gave me a real appreciation of the training regimen someone must go through to make it to the Olympic Games. We worked hard for a month at Colorado Springs and then went to Canada for about 10 matches. I came away from that experience with more confidence in my game. One of my teammates, Logan Tom, incidentally went on to make the United States Olympic team that just played in Australia.”
Bell says this is, without a doubt, her strongest season as a player. “I can feel a change in my game,” she said. “I am more intense, more competitive. When I go home and watch high school games, I realize how far I have come. It is my hope I am still learning and will be a better player.”
Bell came by her athletic ability naturally. Her father, Robert, was a basketball player, and her older brother, Sky, starred in basketball and football and became a neighborhood hero. “That’s really how I got into athletics, following in the footsteps of Sky,” she said.
In high school, Bell was a standout in basketball and had a tough time choosing between that sport and volleyball. “Track was more of a social event for me,” she said. “I ran the toughest race of all, the 400 meters.”
The only family member who was not involved in athletics was Ky’s mother, Aileen. “My mother is the academic side of me,” Bell said.
And what a side that has turned out to be. Kyleen was valedictorian of her high school class. Majoring in management at Tech, she has been on the Dean’s List every semester. She finished the 1999-2000 school year with a 3.9 grade point average. “I made one B,” she said, smiling.
Bell is not sure about her long-range goals, but she may decide to go into event management, perhaps on a big, corporate level.
For the time being, however, she has some other things to manage, like Georgia Tech’s quest for an ACC volleyball championship, and maybe a ring or two.
