Second choice, right choice fro Naperville N.'s Ward

Volleyball wasn't exactly on Colleen Ward's radar when she was a kid.

Growing up in New Lenox, Ward first fell in love with basketball. The tallest in her class even when she was in kindergarten, Ward naturally became a center when she started playing basketball. She played softball, too, as a first baseman and pitcher.

Volleyball was another matter, however.

"I used to hate volleyball," she said.

It took Ward's parents, Judy and Tim, to nudge their daughter into giving the sport a try when she was in fourth grade.

"I was all basketball," Ward said. "I didn't want to try anything else, but my parents wanted me to try volleyball, so I did and then I ended up liking it better. Basketball's a team sport, too, but I just felt like volleyball was more of a team sport and I just liked that better."

So much so that by the time Ward arrived at Naperville North after her family moved from New Lenox a couple years earlier, volleyball was her only sport.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Ward is the captain of the Daily Herald's DuPage County 2007 girls volleyball all-area team after finishing a fabulous four-year varsity career with a flourish.

The 6-foot-2 outside hitter broke her own school record for kills in a season with 457, surpassing the 431 she landed as a junior. Her kill percentage stood at .547 with a hitting efficiency of .398. She also was her team's top passer with a 2.3 grade, its top server with a 2.5 mark and 41 aces, and its leading blocker with 46 stuffs while finding time to make 157 digs.

Ward makes a habit of delivering booming hits over the block.

"She's just on a different plane," Wheaton Warrenville South coach Bill Schreier said.

Naperville Central coach Brie Isaacson joked that Ward's hard blasts against her team made her want to cover her face.

"Colleen clearly is the kind of player that can change a match, front row or back," Isaacson said. "She is so offensive. But I think the thing for me where I've grown in my respect for her is she's able to do more. I think that's huge because she could have gotten away with just being a great offensive player, but she's upped her back-row game, and I think that says a lot about her."

As a freshman Ward played only in the front row but improved her back-row skills to where she never left the court after that.

"I see that as important for my team," Ward said. "You don't really win games if you don't play defense, so I just new that I needed to. (Sports Performance Volleyball Club coach) Rick Butler always used to tell me how important it was to become a better all-around player, so I just focused on that more than hitting for awhile."

Ward led Naperville North to a 33-5 record, which included tournament titles at Plainfield North, DuPage Area and Lake Park, and victories versus Final Four state teams Naperville Central and Belleville Althoff along with Wheaton Warrenville South (twice), Downers Grove South, Joliet Catholic and Sandburg.

The Huskies went 124-30 in Ward's four years as she picked up where Katie Bruzdzinski left off. Ward wound up breaking Bruzdzinski's school record of 1,334 kills with 1,551 of her own.

"It just seems like she's been around forever because she's been so good for so long," Neuqua Valley coach Kelly Simon said. "She was great when she was a freshman and she's gotten better and better. I'm just really proud that we have a kid like that in our area. She's pretty incredible."

The past two summers Ward helped power Sports Performance to national titles, then trained with the U.S. Women's Junior National Team.

"She's really exceptional," St. Francis coach Peg Kopec said. "She's had such great training as well. The combination of training, physical girls and competitive attitude, she's got it all."

Naperville North coach Jennifer Urban recalled Ward showing up to the first day of tryouts as a freshman.

"We knew immediately that she belonged with the varsity girls and she's starred ever since," Urban said.

Urban remembered Ward recording kills on her first two swings as a freshman in the season opener against Neuqua Valley. Later that year Ward reeled off 30 kills without making an error over two matches in the Lake Park tournament.

"She'll still have matches with one or two errors," Urban said. "Her hitting percentage is excellent considering that every person in the gym knows she's going to get set a good majority of the balls."

Ward is ranked the No. 7 senior in the nation by PrepVolleyball.com. The site called her "the hardest working player in the country."

Urban won't disagree.

"She's a coach's dream," Urban said. "She does everything physically you want her to on the court and then off the court she's a tremendous leader. She's a selfless player and she truly cares more about her teammates than herself."

In fact Ward just might rather hit a ball into the net than talk about herself. She likes talking about the team, but getting her to talk about herself can be as hard as blocking one of her spikes.

Ward doesn't like being singled out from her team. When teammate Kelsey Bowler mentioned at a recent practice that she saw Ward mentioned in "Volleyball Magazine," Urban said her big hitter blushed.

"She's just embarrassed to death of anything," Urban said. "She realizes it's a team sport. You don't see players like that very often that are that talented."

Urban can't get over that Ward continued to put the nets up and take them down through her senior year.

"We joke around like, 'You're one of two seniors and you're putting the poles away. What the heck?' " Urban said. "But she does all the little things. She finishes first in almost every sprint we do, and whenever we need extra people in drills she's always in there. She takes a lot of initiative in everything she does."

Ward laughed when it was suggested that setting up the nets was a job for the younger players.

"Yeah, well, I don't know," she said. "I just remember when I was a younger player. I thought it was kind of annoying to do it, so I try to help out my teammates when I can, I guess, and not leave it all for them to do."

A four-time all-DuPage Valley Conference selection, Ward has also made the DVC's all-academic team for the past three years.

The big question is where Ward will play in college. She's narrowed her choices to Florida, Michigan and Texas and plans to make a decision after taking her final official visit to Florida next week.

Ward went down fighting in her final high school match. She dropped a match-high 23 kills on Benet, which tipped the Huskies 27-25, 15-25, 25-23 in the Class 4A Naperville North sectional semifinals.

After the final point Ward was first in line to congratulate the Redwings as tears welled in her eyes.

"She might be the best hitter I've ever seen in high school," Benet coach Brad Baker said afterward.

It sounds like Ward picked the right sport.