Versatile Alter volleyball star has kept focus

Courtney enters senior season one of country’s top volleyball recruits.

Alter senior volleyball player, Megan Courtney, 17, at her home in Centerville Friday, August 5, 2011.
Image Notes:

E.L. Hubbard/Contributing photographer Alter senior volleyball player, Megan Courtney, 17, at her home in Centerville Friday, August 5, 2011. Image Notes:

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By Kyle Nagel, Staff Writer Updated 10:01 PM Saturday, August 6, 2011

WASHINGTON TWP., Montgomery County — Before Megan Courtney was born, as her parents envisioned what they wanted from their under-construction Washington Twp. home, volleyball was part of the plan.

Rob and Sharon Courtney had become consistent volleyball players in a recreational league for NCR employees (Sharon, a former Bellbrook player, helped teach her husband the sport). In the backyard, they wanted an area that would cradle a home volleyball net.

What resulted were family home games and a practice area for a player who would grow up to be one of the country’s best.

Near the end of a youth, club and prep career that has made her a consensus top-10 national recruit, Courtney enters her senior season at Alter High School as a 6-foot-2 mix of pounding attacker and calculating setter.

A two-time first-team All-Ohio performer, Courtney followed her parents and older brother into the sport that gained all of the intense focus and versatility she displayed in numerous other sports and activities, from tap dancing to tumbling.

Family and observers say Courtney has combined genetics in her slim 6-foot-2 frame — “She’s all bones and muscle,” Rob Courtney said — with volleyball IQ and power at the net to become a leader for the annually skilled Knights.

Unimpressed by attention, Courtney waited nearly eight months to talk with reporters about her commitment to Penn State, which has won the past four Division I college volleyball national championships. She has overcome three significant injuries to her lower body, including a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee during her sophomore basketball season, to become, to some, the most highly coveted recruit in the Class of 2012.

“This is an athlete,” said Rich Zeciski, Courtney’s club volleyball coach with Team Z. “She’s been able to come back in a way I don’t know if other kids would’ve.”

Always moving

Courtney started ballet classes at age 3. Dancing began a string of activities to which she devoted her complete time and attention while displaying her versatility.

As a tap dancer, for instance, she practiced constantly.

“I would tap all over the house, my parents would get so mad,” Courtney said. “I scuffed up the floor, and it made a lot of noise.”

In golf, Courtney was shooting nine-hole scores in the 40s by the sixth grade. As a gymnast, she learned tumbling that would later help her body movement, and family members say she could still do five or six consecutive back handsprings if goaded.

She once wanted to be a cheerleader. She never officially joined a squad but did attend cheer camp. “I was good at yelling,” she said, “I have a loud voice.”

In an older brother, Rob, Courtney found an athletic muse. Now entering his senior volleyball season at Quincy University in Quincy, Ill., Rob was the older sibling Courtney chased around the yard.

“Megan was a fearless little girl,” Sharon Courtney said. “She had to do what her brother was doing. When Rob would dribble a basketball, swing a bat, climb the monkey bars, she thought, ‘Well, I can do it.’ ”

A prized recruit

John Tawa, the Oregon-based owner and operator of PrepVolleyball.com, watched Courtney play extensively for the first time at a tournament earlier this summer. Using his network of coaches and enthusiasts, Tawa already knew Courtney was one of the country’s top players.

By the afternoon, she was the dominant figure in the gym.

“You could immediately see why people are so enamored with her,” Tawa said. “There were periods she was just taking over games, at the highest level.”

High-level college programs have known of that talent for years. Courtney received her first recruiting letter the summer before entering the eighth grade, but she politely declined to respond to overtures early in her high school career because she wanted to focus on her high school experience.

Courtney eventually visited five schools — Penn State (No. 1 in 2010 RPI), Illinois (7), Purdue (11), Cincinnati (16) and Kentucky (53). Penn State appealed to her because its kinesiology department (her career interest is physical therapy) is two floors above the volleyball practice gym. Coaches’ offices sit on the floor in between.

She will join a program with the prestige of five national championships in the past 12 seasons and a coach, Russ Rose, who has collected a 1,033-164 record in 32 seasons with the Nittany Lions.

Into this powerful setting — the Big Ten is considered perhaps the country’s best volleyball conference — Courtney will bring skills that cause longtime observers to pause.

“Have you ever seen her hit a ball? It’s amazing,” said Chris Hart, the Alter athletics director and girls basketball coach who also played volleyball for the school.

“Because she has that hang time, she kind of floats. And she can hit the ball so hard, with such effectiveness, your jaw drops at times.”

High school focus

In 2002, when Courtney was in the third grade, she was in the stands at the Nutter Center as Alter beat Millersburg West Holmes to win the Division II state championship, the program’s first.

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Megan Courtney

Sport: Volleyball

School: Alter

Class: Senior

Size: 6-2

College: Committed to four-time defending national champion Penn State

Accolades: Two-time first team All-Ohio selection

Etc.: Considered a consensus top 10 recruit in her class

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