Hanging with the best in the world: West Aurora graduate Carlini eager for Olympic volleyball, village life
Something Lauren Carlini has dreamed about since seventh grade is now a couple weeks away, and the Olympic volleyball standout from Aurora can't wait.
Carlini became a member of the U.S. Women's National Team in 2016. She was on track to play in the 2020 Olympics that were postponed because of the pandemic, then did not make the trip to the 2021 Games in Tokyo (12 of the members of the national team do).
Carlini will make her Olympic debut in Paris where the women's team will try to defend its 2021 gold medal.
“I'm really excited and really honored being able to represent our country,” said Carlini, a 2012 West Aurora graduate who won the Gatorade National Player of the Year before becoming a three-time All-American and Sullivan Award winner at Wisconsin.
“The volleyball is going to be amazing and that is going to be super cool and surreal,” Carlini said. “But the experience being in the village and the dining hall seeing the best athletes in the world all in one place at the pinnacle of their sport, that is the part that every day is really going to be jaw dropping, awestruck.”
Carlini returned from Turkey in April after completing her eighth year playing professionally overseas. She has about 20 friends and family joining her in Paris, including parents Tony and Gale and several former coaches and teammates at Wisconsin.
“I'm so excited they get to be with me in Paris, this journey, and be able to experience this with me,” Carlini said. “The hard work, dedication, heartbreak that happened in 2021, all led to now.”
The women's team is in training. They have three scrimmages this week with the Netherlands, ranked eighth in the world. Carlini and her teammates leave July 20 for Paris.
The U.S. team ranks fifth in the world behind Brazil, Italy, Poland and Turkey. They open the Olympics playing China, Serbia and France.
“The girls on the team in 2021 know this is a different group,” Carlini said. “We haven't had the success in the past three years that we did in Tokyo. I'm not sure there's expectations really in terms of what Paris Olympics will look like and the results, but the USA team is going to go out there and play the best volleyball we possibly can knowing the team on the other side of the net has a say in it as well.
“We're getting better. At the beginning of this training block about two weeks ago, it felt like we were worlds away. This week it's gotten much better. Much more competitive, looking like more where we want to be. It's showing promise as long as we keep chipping away.”
Carlini, a setter, said roles on the team are still open. Two of her teammates, Dana Rettke and Kelsey Robinson Cook, also are from Illinois.
Robinson Cook, from Bartlett and St. Francis High School, played on the 2016 U.S. team that took bronze and the 2021 gold medal squad. Rettke is from Riverside-Brookfield.
“We don't have a starting lineup yet,” Carlini said. “We have some pieces and I think we are figuring it out more as we go. Unique as some teams have had the same lineup for two, three, four years. For us it’s a blessing and a curse we have the depth we do. This mentality of whatever my role is I’m going to accept it and be great at it. If I'm coming off the bench or starting I've been in all these positions before. None of this new to me.”
One thing that will be new happens after the Olympics when Carlini returns to her Madison, Wisconsin, home for the first year of League One Volleyball, a professional women’s volleyball league.
“It’s so nice to have some roots down in Wisconsin and not live out of two suitcases and continue to play a game for a living,” Carlini said. “I’m really excited about the possibilities for this league. We have what it takes to make this successful and sustainable.”