Maggie Kyriakides is confident in her travel team at Club Savannah Volleyball, which helps explain its success.
“I think we’re going to do great,” the outside hitter said before her 17/18 Mizuno Blue squad left for Baltimore, site of the 2024 USA Volleyball Girls 18s Junior National Championship on Friday through Sunday.
“I think we all have a very positive attitude,” said Kyriakides, 17, who joined Club Savannah at age 13. “We all want to put work in at practice. We all put in a lot of effort into the sport. We all want to play at the next level.”
Kyriakides, a junior at Savannah Christian with three years on the Raiders’ varsity, plans to play in college and is looking at NCAA Division I programs.
According to the Club Savannah website, the high school seniors on the Mizuno Blue squad who already have college commitments are: Richmond Hill 
High School’s Carson Reeves (to Wingate University), Courtney Joseph (to Auburn Montgomery) and Gwyneth Harper (to Georgia College & State); and Effingham County’s Lydia Miller (to Coastal Alabama Community College).
The roster also includes players from several high schools: junior Samantha Johnson (RHHS), sophomore Talia Johnson (RHHS), junior Reese Theriot (Savannah Christian), junior Maya Swenson (Islands), sophomore Alyson Dennison (Beaufort, S.C.), and sophomore Clara Vorel (South Effingham).
“It’s a mixture of a bunch of ages, which is super cool. We all click,” Kyriakides said. “I’m really close with a lot of girls I’ve been on the team with for like three years. It’s a very close team.”
The team had to adjust when head coach Gabriel Woffindin, who had been a coach and administrator with Club Savannah since 2021, left this spring to be assistant coach at Lehigh University’s women’s volleyball team in Bethlehem, Pa.
Shawn Darling, already well known to players at Club Savannah, stepped in to be the head coach and is “amazing,” Kyriakides said. “She helps us a lot.”
“We all want to be successful and work really hard because we love this sport,” Kyriakides said. “We’re all super close. We all have a special bond with each other, which helps a lot in volleyball. The team culture is such an important part of this team sport.”
She said Darling’s first tournament as head coach was the Big South national qualifier on March 29-31 in Atlanta. Kyriakides said the team finished fourth out of 94 entrants.
Mizuno Blue also fared well this year at the Savannah Showdown, the Daytona Beach, Fla., tournament and the Sunshine Classic in Orlando, she said.
The squad earned a bid to the junior nationals at the Southern Region Volleyball Association – representing Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee – qualifier for 18-year-old age division teams on March 9-10 in Jonesboro, Ga.
Kyriakides said the squad won its first and third matches, dropping the middle contest. That earned a bid to nationals for the first time for Mizuno Blue, she said.
There are eight divisions at nationals, with Mizuno Blue placed in the fifth-ranked division, according to the junior nationals website. The American Division is also the largest with 64 squads in 16 four-team brackets. The other divisions have either 48, 32 or 27 teams.
Mizuno Blue’s pool play starts Friday morning at the Baltimore Convention Center with matches at 9 a.m., 10 a.m., and noon. The other three teams are Dynasty of Kansas City, Kan.; Adrenaline of North Georgia and Chattanooga, Tenn.; and the Northern Kentucky Volleyball Club (NKYVC) of the Greater Cincinnati area.
The schedule continues Saturday and Sunday, based on how the team fares.
“We’re definitely playing really good competition, which we’re really excited for,” said Kyriakides, adding that qualifying for the national tournament “is very exciting, very important to our team. We’re really pumped.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy Maggie Kyriakides
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