HOPE — Fourteen years ago, Jenna Grider-Ortega and Erica Raisor were high school volleyball players at Hauser.
At that time, Raisor’s father Jeff Case, the longtime Jets coach, started a club volleyball program for his junior high called HAVOC, an acronym for Hope Area Volleyball Club. Now, Grider-Ortega and Raisor are running the club, and it has taken off in a big way.
When Grider-Ortega and Raisor took over in 2015, HAVOC had had four high school teams and two junior high teams. Last year, there were five high school and six junior high teams and a total of 96 girls.
This year, HAVOC is looking at having 13 to 15 teams, including at at least two elite teams. Grider-Ortega and Raisor are hoping for about 150 girls at the Oct. 28 and Nov. 4 tryouts.
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"When we were playing, we played for one club, and it was our home club," Raisor said. "So we’re wanting girls to come in, and HAVOC should be their home away from home when they come for their out-of-season stuff."
While HAVOC was formerly just for Hope-area residents, it has extended its outreach. Girls from places like Columbus, New Palestine, Greensburg, Shelbyville, Waldron and Brownstown have attended open gyms the past two Sundays.
"I think a lot of people thought HAVOC was more of a Hope-friendly kind of club, and we’ve expanded so much," Grider-Ortega said. "That was one of our goals when we took over — to open it up and get bigger and give families a more affordable club to play at and be closer instead of driving an hour a couple of times a week to go to practices."
Most of HAVOC’s teams stay within an hour drive for the tournaments in which they compete. The new elite squads will have more travel, more competitive tournaments and more college exposure. They plan to go to the AAU nationals in June in Orlando, Florida.
HAVOC will hold a parent meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Hauser main gym. There will be one more open gym from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday prior to the tryouts that begin the following weekend.
"(The open gyms are) more to get the girls going before tryouts and kind of get the coaches an extra look at them so we’re not just basing it off of the two days (of tryouts) that we have," Grider-Ortega said.
HAVOC has 18 coaches on staff, which will spread between the teams it outfits this year. Raisor will coach one of the elite teams, with Grider-Ortega being her assistant.
The players are excited.
"We get to play with people we know, and we get to build off of our school team, too," said Adrianna Musillami, an eighth-grader at Hauser.
Charlie Clark, also an eighth-grader at Hauser, agreed.
"It’s fun," Clark said. "We don’t have to travel, and we can just be here whenever we can be."
Josie Nobbe, an eighth-grader at Greensburg has traveled to Hope to be a part of HAVOC the past few years.
"It’s a really great opportunity," Nobbe said. "It’s really fun."
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HAVOC (Hope Area Volleyball Club) will hold a parent meeting at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Hauser main gym for parents of girls interested in trying out for one of this year’s teams.
Tryouts will be Oct. 28 and Nov. 4 in the Hauser Fieldhouse at Hauser (in back of the north side of the school by the track). High school tryouts will be from 1 to 3 p.m., and junior high tryouts will be from 3 to 5 p.m.
The Elite invite tryout will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 29th in the fieldhouse. Girls wanting to tryout for an Elite team will preregister, and then can be invited from the Oct. 28 tryout.
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