Recent SBHS grad Emily Kortsen named to all-tourney team at
Junior Olympics
Hollister
After all the many accolades she’s racked up, there was still one accomplishment that eluded Emily Kortsen.
A recent graduate of San Benito High School and three-time league MVP, Kortsen helped lead her club volleyball team, Main Beach, to the gold medal in the American Division at the Junior Olympics in Dallas recently.
Having never finished higher than fifth place, which Main Beach did last year, the first-place standing was a fitting ending to Kortsen’s high school career. Kortsen, who has played on Main Beach for the last four years, will be joining fellow Lady ‘Baler Chelsea Fowles at Utah State in the fall.
“This year was definitely a record for the whole club, so it was cool,” said Kortsen, who was also named to the All-Tournament team for the second straight year.
Main Beach, which qualified for the Junior Olympics after finishing second at a tournament in Los Angeles, went 11-0 in Dallas and defeated teams from Minnesota, Florida, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin.
They beat Team Atlantis of Ohio in the gold medal match 2-0, a team that had five starters over 6-feet tall.
Kortsen, one of two Main Beach players listed at over 6-feet, contributed a match-high in kills.
“We were pretty confident and we were doing really good in practice,” said Kortsen, who plays right outside hitter. “But it’s always a surprise when you take the whole thing. We definitely had high hopes, high expectations.”
Kortsen said Main Beach relied on its serve-receive and passing to offset the height of Team Atlantis, and focused on speed to hopefully beat the blocks at the net.
“They were big,” Kortsen added. “We played them on the second day of the tournament and we beat them, but it was really close.
“They had been doing really good and they were one of the bigger teams in the tournament.”
The Junior Olympics didn’t come until a month and a half after Main Beach’s previous tournament in San Jose, however. The time off allowed the team, which included setter and tournament MVP Karissa Cook of Harbor, to bond, Kortsen said. Picking up scrimmages against teams from Croatia and Czechoslovakia along the way, Main Beach eventually finished the Junior Olympics undefeated, losing just a single game to a team from Minnesota.
“We definitely got closer and that helped our chemistry, too,” Kortsen said.
Kortsen will now report to Utah State on Aug. 10 for practice, where she’ll be joining Fowles, her former setter at SBHS.
“She told me to start doing the workouts,” Kortsen said of Fowles, “so I’m in shape coming in.”
