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HERALD/REVIEW
FORT HUACHUCA — The U.S. All-Army men’s volleyball team hit hard, blocked bigger and looked well on its way to finishing the Armed Forces Volleyball Championships.
This performance came after a 25-19, 25-16, 25-18 sinking of Navy on Tuesday at a pumped-up Barnes Field House.
Army is atop the men’s standings at 5-0, with Navy treading behind at 2-3.
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All-Army head coach Ray Javier, a Hawaiian man with a shaved head, was also one of the team’s top players. Along with Lt. Scott Kittleson, Javier laid down huge kills with ferocity onto the hardwood.
“It was teamwork,” said Javier, an active National Guardsman who will not be available for the Conseil International du Sport Militaire volleyball tournament from June 8-19 at Barnes Field House. “Everybody had a role. Everybody did their job, we played together. We’re a more fine-tuned machine. The core of the team has been practicing in Washington (state) since December.”
Kittleson played for George Mason University, as well as Slovenia and Portugal.
“We’ve been gelling so well,” Kittleson said. “When we went to the last point against Air Force and the Marine Corps, it showed us what we could do.”
Players like Kittleson could be selected to the CISM team after today’s matches. The Army men clinched first place, while the Navy women’s team beat the Army.
Private first class Chris Linke was one of the team’s forces in the middle, turning back hard hits like those from Hospital Medic Paul Welma, who along with hospital technician John Mills is one of the tallest players on the team.
In fact, the All-Army team consists of several short players who can all jump as if they have springs in their shoes. The All-Navy team were slightly taller players who could not always hit around or through blockers.
Navy head coach Mike Schwob called timeouts with Mike Martz-like efficiency, like he had unlimited amounts of time to call them. With All-Army runs like 10-2, 8-3 and the like, no one could blame him.
Linke hammered home the match-winning kill.
In the women’s match, the All-Navy team beat the all-Army team, 25-18, 25-16, 25-9. Navy is in first place heading into today’s matches.
“We did some reviews of our past games that we played,” said head coach Morris Davis, who coached the All-Navy team for 14 years. “We realized that some of the problems were in our passing and defense. We made some adjustments. We were a little late moving to the ball. We stabilized ourselves in doing that tonight.”
In the third day of the tournament, Army defeated Air Force 25-20, 21-25, 25-21, 25-19 and the Marine Corps beat the Navy, 25-22, 25-23, 25-19. In day 2, Army defeated Navy 25-20, 22-25, 25-16, 17-25, 16-14. Air Force defeated Marine Corps, 25-16, 25-18, 23-25, 25-16, while Navy beat the Marine Corps in five.
