Women's volleyball has three verbals for 2010 from what I gather reading various reporting sites. One verbal is Geneva's 6'1" outside hitter Lauren Wicinski. She is the daughter of Rob & Gina Wicinski who are both former NIU athlete's. Rob Wicinski played football and Gina Wicinski (Graf?) played volleyball. Lauren is coached by K.C. Johnsen who happens to be new VB assistant coach Coley Pawikokski's
(Johnsen) father. Coley played on the last NIU MAC Championship and NCAA tournament team in 2001. Coley Pawikowski and her husband Dan (also an NIU assistant coach) also coached Lauren on a club team.
Here is a link to an article in the Kane County Chronicle on her decision to attend NIU. She also plays a mean game of basketball.
http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/2009.../67401201/

Other verbals; Sarah Angelos, Waukegan H.S, Kayla Zeno, Stillwater, MN

They are recruiting another girl from Philadelphia, PA. Her mom and dad are both Alums and would be great to get them involved with the athletic program.

Klake, who is that?

Sarah Dowd.

(08-03-2009 07:34 PM)Fade2black Wrote:  Kayla Zeno, Stillwater, MN

There used to be a nice pipeline of MN athletes to NIU in all sports.

MN only has one D1A school, and the next closest might be UW Madison. NIU is in a good postion to attract serious D1 athletes from MN.

There used to be a nice pipeline of MN athletes to NIU in all sports.

MN only has one D1A school, and the next closest might be UW Madison. NIU is in a good postion to attract serious D1 athletes from MN.
I agree totally about recruiting Minnesota, especially for volleyball as they play excellent club ball up there.In fact, that 01 VB team had four from Minn. Jenny Bowman, Jen Vondehar, Rina Widboom & Tera Lobdell as a freshman. That was a great MAC championship game when we just killed Ball State at Evans Fieldhouse. We appeared to have another committ from Minny, but she has apparently switched to SIU. She is an OH/MB so the fact that with the recruits this year and verbals for next, she would have been the eighth OH/MB that would be a freshman or sophmore next year. That's a big crowd at the net.

I know the mens basketball staff has been following and recruiting several Minnesota players over the past few years they've been there. Several other schools like Northern Iowa, Drake, Wisc-Green Bay, North/South Dakota's, etc. that border Minnesota also recruit it hard in basketball and kids from that state have always dotted the rosters. There are traditionally a couple pretty strong AAU programs from Minnesota, led by the Howard Pully program, each year.
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Sorry to digress from the thread topic. We have become huge fans of the sport of volleyball with my daughter so involved with it now. She will be a sophomore playing up on our varsity team this fall. We even attended a couple NIU games last year. She also went to one of Coach Gooden's one-day camps this past summer and really enjoyed it. We hope to get to a few more this fall. I was impressed with how much fun the band had at those games as well. Hopefully they have a good year and more fans are able to get out and support them.