The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
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From Saline to the Stars
Ex-Hornet Paolini joins U.S. Olympic program
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: March 27, 2008
To say it's been a big year for former Saline Hornet volleyball star Lauren Paolini would be a bit of an understatement.
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The 6-foot-5 junior middle blocker started by helping lead her Texas Longhorns to a 27-4 record, No. 3 ranking, and the program's first conference title in a decade, earning third-team All-America honors on the way.
Paolini's Texas performance was good enough to earn a January tryout with the U.S.A. Volleyball National Training Team. Her success there led to an invitation to join the team and train full time at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, where she's spent the last two months before embarking on the team's current three-week tour of China.
"It has been an amazing past 10 months," Paolini wrote from Tianjin in an e-mail interview conducted this week. "It has definitely been a big surprise ... I definitely did not expect to receive any of these honors or opportunities."
One of those opportunities Paolini "never thought" she'd have so soon would be the chance to join the 2008 U.S. Olympic team, which will be chosen from a pool of professional players and those currently on the National Training Team.
Paolini, a 2005 Saline graduate, doesn't expect to be chosen to represent her country in Beijing this fall. But she nonetheless believes her time with U.S.A. Volleyball will be a huge asset in the future.
"Although anything is possible, I think, right now, this is more of a training experience for me to prepare for future Olympics," she wrote. "I am competing with players who have been doing this year in and year out for 10-15 years now and this is only my first.
"For example, another middle blocker, Danielle Scott, will be returning this year to compete in her fourth Olympics. Players like her that are so experienced and so talented.
"However, this experience will only get me ready for what is to come. Not only the Olympics in the future, but if I decide to play professionally, this international experience will only help my resume."
Paolini's time with the national team program has been extremely productive, she wrote, but that doesn't mean it's been easy.
"It has been amazing training side by side with the most elite players in the country," she wrote. "I have learned so much from them and from competing against them at such a high level every day in the gym.
"The most difficult adjustment that I have had to make is preparing to play different styles of volleyball. In the U.S., most teams play relatively the same style of volleyball -- the sets are high and the hits are hard. In comparison, Chinese volleyball is much faster. The hits are not as hard, but they're much quicker."
Paolini will have five more exhibition matches on the team's tour to make those on-court adjustments. Off-the-court, she wrote that while not everything has been perfect in her first overseas trip — "they allow smoking in the gyms!" she wrote. She's also grateful for the unique opportunity.
"It is really amazing to see such a different culture and to be on the opposite side of the world," she wrote. "Some of the older girls have told me it's been really different from many other USA trips since we have so much time to experience the culture and sightsee.
"The coolest thing about our tour so far is that our coach (Beijing native Lang Ping) is a huge celebrity here from her national team years. She is bigger than Yao Ming in China and relative to Michael Jordan in America. Everywhere we go, there are crowds of people swarming her, paparazzi and camera crews. She even has her own body guards. Because we are here with Lang Ping (our coach), we also get treated like royalty. It's been awesome."
One advantage for Paolini in her efforts with U.S.A. volleyball is that two of her Texas teammates, hitters Destinee Hooker and Juliann Faucette, tried out and joined the National Training Team at the same time — particularly since the move to Colorado Springs meant leaving school for a semester.
"It was definitely hard at first to make the transition, leaving all of my friends in Austin and going from a somewhat well-rounded lifestyle to one that is strictly focused on volleyball," she wrote. "It was a big help having my Texas teammates make the transition with me. Just having someone to talk to about what we were going through together really helped.
It's little surprise that Paolini would credit her teammates for getting her through the transition when she also credits the Longhorns as a whole for giving her the national team opportunity in the first place.
"I have been so fortunate to have such an amazing team at the University of Texas," she wrote. "Volleyball is such a team sport that I have to give most of the credit to my teammates because they are the ones that pushed me and have had such a huge effect on how I play."
When her tour of duty with the National Training Team is over, Paolini's next goal will be taking Texas to the next step in the NCAAs. Paolini collected a laundry list of awards and accomplishments her junior year — third-team All-America, first team All-Big 12, first team Academic All-Big 12, Texas team highs in total blocks and hitting percentage (.418) — but admitted she was still disappointed after the Longhorns fell to fifth-ranked Southern California in the regional finals.
"Obviously I am very proud of my team and the season we had. We accomplished a lot of the goals we had set out for ourselves at the beginning of the season," she wrote. "However, it was a very disappointing way to end the season because we all had expected to go further into the tournament, especially after we'd had such a good season and were on a winning streak. I just really wish that game would have come earlier in the season at a less critical point so that we could have learned from our mistakes and moved on from there."
For now, though, Paolini will focus on learning from her time with the best volleyball players in the country, ducking the Chinese paparazzi and hoping things work out differently for the 'Horns next year. Staff Writer Jerry Hinnen can be reached at 429-7380 or jhinnen@heritage.com.
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