Cary-Grove's Lamberti all about team

For the protection of the other fifth graders at Cary-Grove's 2002 summer volleyball camp, prodigy Kelly Lamberti had to be elevated to the junior high level.

“Fifth and sixth-graders generally don't know how to play, so it was dangerous to have Kelly there because she could jump serve and attack,” Cary-Grove girls volleyball coach Patty Langanis recalled. “It was really just silly. I had the net as low as it would possibly go, and she was jumping and attacking and hit a girl in the face.

“Because of the safety factor I had to move her with girls three to four years older. I also did it to challenge her a little bit because she was not being challenged by playing with kids her own age.”

And so began a trend in the volleyball career of Kelly Lamberti of Cary, a player who grew accustomed to being the youngest on the court.

“I always played with the older girls,” she said. “It was kind of intimidating at first, but it's always helped me out.”

For example, at the age of 10, Lamberti was good enough to play for the Sky-High volleyball club's 12-U team.

In junior high school she practiced in the summertime with the Cary-Grove varsity, a team that featured Kelly's older sister, Lauren Lamberti, now a senior volleyball player at the University of Connecticut.

As a high school freshman Kelly was immediately placed on the varsity roster, and she was mentored by veteran Trojans like Jamie Kuhl, now a basketball player at St. Norbert, and Allison Straumann, now a volleyball player at Iowa.

By her sophomore year Lamberti had developed into Cary-Grove's leading hitter. The following summer, she and her Sky-High 16-U Black teammates won the AAU national championship.

Midway through her junior year Lamberti seized ownership of the Cary-Grove record for career kills and has been adding to it ever since.

Later in her junior season, she carried the Trojans on her back during a thrilling state semifinal comeback victory over Glenbrook South. With her team trailing 24-22, she delivered 3 kills in a 5-1 run that flipped the outcome.

“I just forgot about the fact we were in the state game,” Lamberti said. “I love pressure. I'm used to finishing games when it's needed, so I just thought it was like any other game. My team needed me, so I had to step up for them.”

Lamberti went on to score a match-best 12 kills in the state championship sweep of Lyons, the same number of kills as her six teammates combined. It was the first state championship in any team sport for Cary-Grove.

Now enjoying her senior season, Lamberti, 18, is finally playing with girls her own age.

And she's dominating them.

The even-keeled, explosive force behind Cary-Grove volleyball's rise as a national power, Lamberti is the backbone of the undefeated Trojans (39-0), who enter Saturday's Class 4A Barrington supersectional on a 55-match winning streak. It is the second-longest streak in Illinois high school girls volleyball history.

A .436 hitter, this Ohio University bound 6-footer entered Thursday's Class 4A Jacobs sectional final with 271 kills, 188 digs and 63 aces. For those totals, in addition to the steady leadership she provides for one of the best teams the state has ever produced, Kelly Lamberti of Cary-Grove has been named the honorary captain of the 2010 Daily Herald All-Area girls volleyball team in the Fox Valley.

“She's just an amazing player, one of the best I've seen in 15 years,” said Huntley coach Michelle Jakubowski, whose team's 32-5 record included 2 losses to Lamberti's Trojans. “She's just such a great all-around player, front row, back row. She's a leader on the court. You can just see how much her team trusts everything she does.”

Lamberti's teammates trust her for good reason.

“The team rallies around her because she does not put herself any higher than anyone on the team,” Langanis said. “From the 16th player, she cares about each one of them. I think it's good for young players to see how she can bring a team around her close. They want to play for her, perform for her and do what she says because she puts herself on the same level.

“You don't see that very often in a kid as talented as Lambo. Sometimes they isolate themselves or they put themselves above, which can tear a team apart. It's a really special quality that she has. She is by far one of the very best players we have ever seen in our area, but if you talk to her she is as humble as they come.”

Lamberti is every coach's dream when it comes to natural athleticism combined with work ethic. Lamberti was coordinated enough to teach herself to jump serve as a fifth grader, yet she was dedicated enough to spend years working hard to perfect her technique. Last season she tied Karen (Liss) Whitehouse's school record of 96 aces in a season. And she broke Whitehouse's school record for kills by 23 with 373.

Whitehouse, who over the last two seasons has coached Hampshire to a split of 2 matches against Lamberti's Trojans, appreciates talent when she sees it, especially when the talented player in question performs under control.

“She's probably the most calm player I've ever seen,” Whitehouse said of Lamberti. “She never got overly excited or down when we got up a little bit on them. She was just such a composed player. It's very impressive to see.”

Lamberti won't approach her 2009 record of 373 kills this season because Indiana-bound setter Colleen Smith has purposefully distributed hitting opportunities evenly at Langanis' request. The savvy coach wanted to make sure her team's other offensive weapons senior Allison Whimpey and juniors Melanie Jereb and Ashley Rosch got enough sets to develop and keep the offense unpredictable.

“Lamberti is the first to support that kind of thinking,” Langanis said. “She's very, very happy that we don't give her the ball as much as we did last year because she sees the big picture. I've honestly coached big hitters who count how many sets they get a game. Not Lamberti.”

“It's a relief for me that I don't have to carry such a big load this year because every single hitter on our team is awesome,” Lamberti confirmed. “I love when Colleen sets everyone on the team. She is so good at moving the ball around and everyone on the team has stepped up so well.”

Later this month Lamberti will sign her National Letter of Intent to play college volleyball at Ohio University. A student with a 3.8 grade-point average, she intends to major in education and plans to become a math teacher.

First, she has one last equation to complete at the high school level: adding one plus one, as in the 2010 state championship trophy to the 2009 version already in the school's trophy case.

“We're just taking it one game at a time and not even thinking about our goal of winning state,” Lamberti said. “We're taking the next game and we're just playing one point at a time.”

Cary-Grove will be led in its quest to repeat by Lamberti, a player who lives for such moments.

“Great athletes enjoy competition, which is what I think differentiates the phenomenal athletes and the good athletes,” Langanis said. “The phenomenal athlete relishes a great game or a big opponents. Lamberti definitely rises to those occasions.”