Former Zeeland volleyball standout reigns on the beach

By GARY BROWER
myZeeland Staff

Lori Armstrong and Carin Avery are two of the oldest women on the Midwest Volleyball Professionals Association beach volleyball tour.
But in the sand, experience and guile oftentimes overshadow athleticism and aggressiveness, as Armstrong and Avery displayed throughout the summer.
Armstrong, 31 and pregnant with her second child, and Avery, 34, continued to prove themselves among the top teams on the tour, with Armstrong, of Zeeland, emerging as the most successful women on the beach in 2008.
Armstrong, whose maiden name is Janssen, earned the most points of all the women on the four-event tour, making her one of the front runners for the tour’s most valuable player award.
“The beach game has both a power aspect and a finesse aspect and as you become a veteran player you learn to take advantage of the elements,” said Armstrong, a 1994 Zeeland High School graduate. “A lot of the girls right out of college are more dynamic and explosive, but maybe not as savvy. We have learned that a kill is a kill.
“The ball just has to hit the sand. You just have to find the open spot on the court.”
Armstrong and Avery, the women’s volleyball coach at Valparaiso University,  have been partners since they joined forces in 2001 and have been the dominant team on the women’s MPVA tour. This year, however, they played in just two events together, finishing third each time.
Armstrong played the other two tournaments with Chara Harris, of Sarasota, Fla., who played at Grand Valley State University when Armstrong was an assistant coach there. Harris is one of the top players in the southeastern United States and is ranked in the top 50 nationally, according to the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP).
Armstrong and Harris won both of tournaments in which they partnered.
“Lori is a very consistent player. She doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. She is one of the strongest offensive players on the tour. She doesn’t beat herself,” said Rick Rykse, general manager of the MPVA tour. “She doesn’t have any weaknesses to her game. Most people have a weakness.”
It was Rykse who made a couple of phone calls seven years ago that brought Avery and Armstrong together. It was a successful pairing right from the start, as Rykse thought it would be.
“At the time, they were both very strong offensive players and had the ability to sideout consistently, but didn’t necessarily have consistent partners,” he said. “They won their first event together, which was Port Huron (in 2001), and up until this year, they played together just about every tournament.
“They don’t have the same athleticism that they had three or four years ago ... and they don’t have the time to train the some of the other players do,” Rykse added. “But they are still able to compete with anybody on tour.”
Armstrong is a pediatric surgery nurse at Spectrum Health Downtown Campus in Grand Rapids and the mother of a 19-month-old daughter, Lexi.  Her work schedule and family commitments do not allow her to get to the beach as often as she would like, but she remains competitive at a high level and plans to continue playing, at least in the near future.
“Beach volleyball is a sport that you can play for a long time. I would not consider it that I’m getting older,” she said. “I think (the women on the MPVA) have a lot of respect for the veteran players. They realize that we know the game very well and they want to learn some of that from us.”
Armstrong plans to return to the tour in 2009, but this time with a bit larger cheering section. She and husband Eric are expecting their second child early next year.
“I’ve been playing all summer and I’m four months pregnant. We are very excited about it, but it added an extra challenge to the summer,” Armstrong said “A lot of the girls I played with knew, but quite honestly, there were some that told after the (Aug. 2) tournament was done that were quite surprised.
“My doctor told me it was safe to be out there, but I wasn’t going to be dive after some balls that I normally would have.”