NCAA volleyball: Lewis volleyball rebuilds itself to Final Four level at Current News

Lewis University volleyball team's Jay and Greg Petty during practice. (Scott Strazzante / Tribune…)

May 02, 2012|Globetrotting by Philip Hersh

For nearly a decade, the Lewis University men's volleyball team has tried to exorcise some memories, even if they already had been wiped from history.

Actually, it is the erasures — and what fills those spots — that haunted a program once among the national elite.

That is what makes the history the 2012 Flyers have written so special.

Lewis, a Division II school in all but volleyball, has made the NCAA Division I Final Four for the first time since 2004, when violations that would lead to probation and forfeitures tainted the program even if the players responsible were no longer on the team.

The third-seeded Flyers (26-6) meet second-seeded USC (23-5) Thursday night on the Trojans' home floor in Los Angeles. Top-seeded UC-Irvine (24-5) meets No. 4 Penn State (23-5) in the other semifinal. The final is Saturday.

From 2001 through 2003, Lewis was found to have used foreign players who no longer were amateurs and to have granted more athletic scholarships than allowed.

That caused Lewis to forfeit its 2003 NCAA and Midwest Intercollegiate Volleyball Association tournament titles, plus MIVA regular-season titles in 2003 and 2001. Its records from 2001 through 2003, which had been 74-21, are listed as 0-95. It was banned from postseason play in 2005 and 2006, and its total scholarships cut from 41/2 to 3 from 2005 through 2008.

Outside hitter Jay Petty of Downers Grove North took a redshirt season as a freshman the year the sanctions ended. As a junior on the team that last Saturday ended Ohio State's five-year run as MIVA tourney champs, Petty feels a debt to the players who bridged the abyss.

"There were players like Drew Pickering (2009 MIVA player of the year) who got us back on track to contend for not only MIVA championships but eventually the NCAA championship," Petty said.

"Knowing some of the guys who played on the teams under sanctions motivated us to push harder and play better than we had been."

After a fast start, with victories at Pepperdine and Hawaii, the Flyers suddenly ran into trouble with road losses at Loyola and Ohio State in late March that coach Dan Friend called, "a big speed bump."

That led to some soul-searching and a tactical personnel change. Petty's brother Greg, a freshman outside hitter, retreated to a position where he would become more of a passer to get redshirt freshman Geoff Powell of Claremont, Calif., into the lineup as an outside hitter.

"It was the turning point of the season," said Jay Petty, who tied for sixth nationally in kills at 4.0 per game.

Lewis has won all seven matches since.

"Greg was awesome, and Geoff was named conference freshman of the year," Friend said.

He took over as coach in 2004, after the violations led to the resignation of Dave Deuser, who received a five-year ban from coaching at an NCAA member school. Friend began the rebuilding process with the recruitment of 15 freshmen, a group that included eventual first team All-America Pickering.

"Jay learned a lot playing behind Drew," Friend said.

Jay Petty and sophomore setter BJ Doldog of Palatine both were named second team All-American, the school's first All-American players since Pickering.

"Initially, I didn't know what the timeline would be to get back to the highest level," Friend said. "Now that we are there, I think of a lot of the great guys who built this program from scratch in 1994 and then saw the unfortunate thing that happened.

"To reestablish that level of program makes it so sweet and satisfying to me, the university and those volleyball alumni."

Memories, as the song goes, can be made of this.

phersh@tribune.com

Twitter @olyphil