In one of the first volleyball games she ever played, Anna Connelly broke an opponent’s nose with a serve. She was in seventh grade.

Volleyball was her first non-contact sport.

Connelly grew up in Minnesota, which meant learning to skate as she learned to walk. She was raised on hockey; it was in the family’s fabric. Skating against local boys molded her into an especially physical competitor. But when she was eight and the family moved to California, she found volleyball

“I got sick of playing hockey,” she said. “I wanted to play a girl’s sport.”

Connelly has played the sport ever since, from Los Angeles to Syracuse. In her first season as an SU libero, Connelly revels in SU head coach Leonid Yelin’s expectations while fighting through homesickness.

At age 10 on a beach in California, she saw her first volleyball tournament. By the time her family moved to Arizona when she was 11, Connelly told her parents she wanted to quit hockey.

Because of her husband’s job as a Fox Sports executive, Connelly’s mother, Cara Connelly, said their family had seen an ugly side of overly involved parents in athletics and tried not to micromanage their daughter. They told her to play whatever sport she wanted.

“When she came up with volleyball, I was shocked,” Cara said. “I had no idea, but she signed herself up for the school team.”

When Connelly was 13, she became more serious and joined an Arizona club team, which practiced nine hours per week. She hated it. The next season, a friend coaxed her into switching clubs. There, she flourished. 

By the time she moved back to California at age 17, Connelly was ready for a harder challenge. She found the Southern California Volleyball Club, owned by USC men’s volleyball head coach Bill Ferguson and his wife, Brenn Ferguson. Connelly missed tryouts, but they put her on the team anyway, albeit with no guarantees of playing time.

“She’s burning to be coached, and she asks so many questions,” said Brenn, who also coached Connelly in private lessons.

The Fergusons thought so highly of Connelly that they hired her to coach a 7–10-year-old’s league.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling, seeing someone learn from you,” Connelly said.

Moving so much as a child prepared Connelly for leaving her home in Los Angeles, but the transition to life at Syracuse still wasn’t easy. To help, her parents sent a memento: a panoramic shot of her backyard — complete with blue ocean, sandy beach, setting sun and, in the distance, the Hollywood sign.

“If I wake up homesick, that gets me through the day,” she said.

The same physical defending she honed in her youth hockey career translates well to the demands of playing libero under Yelin. The gritty, hard-nosed style of play has carried Connelly through her first few months at SU.

“He expects so much out of us,” she said. “He makes you want to be better, to not let him down.”

Published on September 15, 2014 at 11:31 pm

Contact Sam: sjfortie@syr.edu | @Sam4TR