Cepero battles pressure of the can’t-miss label
CEPERO from page 8__
So it Was basketball at 2, volley
ball at 7. Club level not long after that.
Her sophomore year in high school in
Bayamon, Puerto Rico, she knew
sports was her future meal ticket.
Then she knew she had to leave her
hometown of Dorado to go to “the
States.”
Greicha, as most call her, went to
Philadelphia for a summer basketball
league, where she was discovered for
that sport. Her ability in volleyball
had been discovered already in Puerto
Rico. Then came a short stint at a high
school in Florida, where she knew she
wouldn’t learn English well enough.
So she went to Baltimore her senior
year. And she learned English.
She watched nearly every college
volleyball and basketball coach in
America offer her a scholarship. She
listened to coach after coach try and
persuade her away from Nebraska by
telling her it didn’t have flights to and
from Puerto Rico. She came anyway.
“I am the most blessed person in
the world,” she said, “now that women
are having the recognition in sports,
and people are starting to follow us.
People in this state live foT the
University of Nebraska.”
Her smile disarms, but she has a
pose of poise that would make Daisy
Buchanan proud. Her fingernails are
painted, even for practice. She wears
blue dolphin earrings. And she hasn’t
perfected the standard poli-sports
answer to the hard questions yet.
Which is perfect.
She is the next big thing, though
you might not know it. Her fanfare
foreshadows the future, though you
might not see it. But you will soon.
Not only for who she is but what she
represents.
So, a primer for getting to know
the female sports phenom - the diva
for the 21st century.
***
On media day for thfe 1999
Nebraska volleyball team, as Cepero
was fiddling around in the comer, NU
Volleyball Coach Terry Pettil
announced it to all in the room.
“Greicha has more poise than
probably anybody in this room,” Pettit
said. He was including himself in thal
statement.
Pettit and Nebraska Women’s
Basketball Coach Paul Sanderford
bubble at Cepero’s ability. Sanderford
says WNBA. Pettit says she has the
talent of players in Cuba - which is
tops in international volleyball.
She is 6-foot-2. She can run. She
has a 30-inch vertical. She could play
any position, if asked to, in eithei
sport.
What positions will she play? In
volleyball, Pettit says she could be one
of the greatest setters in college vol
leyball history.
For now, she is an outside hittei
who adds to NU’s power in the 6-2
offense. She is third in kills on a team
that has one of the nation’s most dom
inant players in Nancy Meendering.
Earlier in the season, she occasionally
fell back into setter mode, knocking
into players on the court going for the
ball.
Still, the setter prophecy is possi
ble. Consider this: If Fiona Nepo were
dominant at 5-9, what could Cepero
do with 5 more inches?
“Her talent,” drawls Sanderford,
“is pretty amazing. Oh, she can play
For Greeks.
For College.
For Life For Whatever.
■
We're looking for a few good
reps. Please inquire at our
website, or call i-«&^EEK56t
the game.”
He is referring to basketball,
where he’d like to see her play small
forward. Cepero isn’t playing basket
ball this year because the Huskers
don’t have a scholarship for her. But
she will next year, after volleyball
ends, and she will probably play bas
ketball one year after her volleyball
career is over.
Basketball is her passion, her orig
inal love. But she’ll take the Olympics
in either one. In volleyball, she hangs
suspended above the net; she’s quick
enough to dig and a good enough
server to hit five aces in a match. And
she isn’t even playing the position
she’s been seasoned to play. And it
isn’t even the sport she was most cov
eted in.
• “Whatever Greicha sets her mind
to,” Pettit said, “she can do. There isn’t
any. doubt. Greicha knows she wants
to be.”
So let it be written.
t So let it be done.
***
She is part of a new generation, a
movement if you will, of women who
didn’t exist 10 to 15 years ago. Not
with this type of hype. Not this kind of
fanfare.
She knows it, acknowledges it, is
well aware of the advances women
before her have made, buoyed by the
Title IX law signed 27 years ago that
threatens every minor male sport in a
strained athletic department budget.
After the Oklahoma match, not
long in NU’s past, she stood among a
sea of young girls who thrust their T
shirts, programs or volleyballs in her
face. Pen in her mouth, she signed as
many as she could as the girls, who are
not necessarily aware of who she is or
what talent she has, came at her in
wave after wave after wave.
She stood and signed the longest
among her teammates after that
match, standing 30 minutes, with a
foreign T-shirt in her hand and not a
girl to claim it at the end of the night.
Most of these young girls seek no
particular individual but rather a con
cept, the idea of being a woman ath
lete. So there is pressure.
“It’s scary,” Cepero said. “I just get
anxious. I just want to get on the court
and start doing, start playing. At that
moment, I don’t think about it.
“But then I’m off the court. And I
look up, and I was like, ‘This is one of
the best programs in the nation and
this college level, and this is NCAA
and this is Division I,’ and it all rushed
through my mind, and I’m like, 'Oh.' I
get it now. And I look at the fans, and I
see what we mean to them. I know that
they think what we do is pretty cool.”
There are times when she wonders
what her teammates must think of her.
She is close to them all, but still, is
there jealousy? It’d be selfish of them.
But human, too.
Such an observation requires, for
whatever reason, a lowered voice.
Nearly a whisper.
H Sport Clubs
At Home this Weekend
NU Women's Soccer takes on Kansas State
this Sunday at 2:00 p.m. The game will be
played at Whittier Field (22nd & W Streets).
-Rain site - Cook Pavilion
NU Water Polo will host Lincoln Southeast
High School Sunday at 7:00 p.m. The game
will be held at the Mabel Lee Hall Pool. FREE!
Fri. & Sat Night
•» HOCKEY - At the Ice Box following the
STARS game against Dordt College. NU will
play again Saturday night at 9:15 p.m.
For more information regarding any of the
UNL Sport Clubs events - Please contact the
. Office of Campus Recreation 472-3467
| Show your support for |
• NU Sport Chibs! :
• Check out the Canoe 8c Kayak Chib •
l booth Nov. 11 &■ 12 9:00 A -2:00P l
• at the City Union for your photo card! *
Results
NU Women's Soccer beat Kansas State Sun.
Nov. 7. The win came after a shoot out, where
team members Tricia Bair, Amber Neubert,
Amanda Hanson and Megan Driesen scored.
Amber Neubert scored NU’s goal tying KSU
1-1 sending the game into double OT & ending
in the shoot out.
u
It becomes scary at some point. It can be
pressure. Thank God my parents just tell me
to work hard and have fun: I just want to
prove everything they say about me is true.’’
Greichaly Cepero
NU volleyball player
“Coach will tell me, ‘Greicha, go
in there and pass,’ and I do it. I do it
right. Then he’ll tell me, ‘Greicha, go
hit it on the left side,’ and I do it right.
Then he says, ‘Go on the right side.’ I
do it right.
“There are people who just play
that position. When you go here and
go there and go back and just do it,
and you can set, too....
“I don’t... sometimes... if...
sometimes I think if I would be them,
I would be like, ‘Oh my God, she just
goes in there and does it, I mean, it
doesn’t seem like it’s difficult for her
at all.’
“It makes me feel bad sometimes.
Sometimes I’m scared that the other
players are like, ‘Oh my God, she’s
just a freshman and look at how much
they talk about her.’ Even before the
season, they were talking about how
much potential I had.
“Do I intimidate other people?
Yeah. And I like that. I want to. But not
with my teammates. Not ever with
them. I love them.”
She remains humble. Cepero
doesn’t think she intimidates oppo
nents right now - that’s Meendering’s
job.
“Now Nancy, they’re scared of,”
she said. “Me? Not yet.”
And by all accounts, Cepero is one
of those people who can balance her
ability and popularity, based largely
on her lighthearted personality.
“She’s so fun and easygoing,”
roommate and NU middle blocker
Amber Holmquist said. “It’s a positive
thing for us as a team.”
Said Pettit: “She’s on solid
ground. A centered person. She
knows who she is. And you respect
that. She’s such an open person. Her
heart and her focus is on this team, not
on herself. And that I can say about
everybody on this team, from the best
athlete to least talented.”
Cepero’s athletic predestination
was clear from a young age. She
learned everything she could from her
father, Pedro. She adopted his pas
sions. Her future is now, her past is
present. She cannot turn her 6-2 frame
away from all this. Even if she wanted
to.
“I had never thought about me that
way before here,” she said. “I mean, I
knew I have potential,. But it never
came from the college coaches like
this. Just to come in before two-a-days
started and to hear (Pettit) say how
much potential I had, it hits home.
“It becomes scary at some point. It
can be pressure. Thank God my par
ents just tell me to work hard and have
fun. I just want to prove everything
they say about me is true. I Want to live
up to those expectations.
“Most of the time I’m like, ‘I don’t
have to prove nothing to nobody’ -1
know what I can do and how much I
can give. But you still want to do it.
Because you don’t want to let down
those people and those expectations.”
This ‘sports is my life’ thing
Cepero talks about? Pettit doesn’t buy
it.
“Every athlete is like that,” he
said. “I felt like that. My daughter (a
setter at Colorado State) felt like that.
But the passion for sports can carry
over into other things.
“Greicha attacks everything that
way. We’re talking about a girl who
takes Japanese in her first semester in
college and does well in it. She
approaches everything she does the
same way.
“Years down the line, Greicha
Cepero will do something great out
side of the field of sports.”
This potential thing is all-encom
passing.
***
Aaron Babcock and Rhonda
Revelle play the unwitting stars in
ending this tale.
It is directly after Cepero’s inter
view. And Babcock, the NU sports
information director for volleyball,
lounges against a column in the NU
Coliseum. Revelle, the Comhuskers’
softball coach, walks by.
And they talk about recruit
Peaches James, a phenom in her own
right, a senior softball pitcher at
Papillion-LaVista.High School who
had a 0.04 earned run average this sea
son, winning 79 of 85 games and
striking out 852 batters over three
years. Another girl that, 10 or 15 years
ago, probably wouldn’t have had her
talent as cultivated as it is now.
And Revelle’s final statement
before going out the door, in a sense,
proved why these athletes exist now. It
nailed the existence of Cepero at
Nebraska. And, somehow, it guaran
teed the future of Greichaly Ceperos
to come.
“I’m going to a softball clinic,”
she said. “Time to work with the 8
year-olds.”
NU beats Buffs, now 1st in Big 12
'From staff reports
Nebraska volleyball is in the famil
iar position of sitting atop the confer
ence standings, after a four-game victo
ry over Colorado and a Texas loss to
Kansas State.
Nebraska improved to 20-5 overall
and 12-3 in conference play with a 15
10,9-15,15-5,15-11 four-game strug
gle in Boulder, Colo.
Nebraska Head Coach Terry Pettit
admitted that his team lacked its usual
quickness at times but was still pleased
with the victory.
“I was concerned about fatigue
coming into the match, and I think that
played a part,” Pettit said. “But some
times you just have to find a way, on the
road, to get an ugly win.”
It was freshman middle blocker
Amber Holmquist who continually
came up big for NU, pounding out a
career-high 15 kills.
All-American Nancy Meendering
was her typical self, pouring in the
floor-high of 22 kills for the match.
The Huskers appeared ready to
dominate proceedings, after jumping to
a 13-0 lead in game one, before a furi
ous 10-1 rally by Colorado. Nebraska
eventually put down the final point to
take the game 15-10.
The Buffaloes (15-9,9-6) battled
back in the second game behind Sonja
Nielsen, tying die match at one game
apiece. Nielsen led the Buffaloes with
18 kills on the night
Nebraska gained back the match
lead with a .486 hitting percentage in
the third game on route to a 15-5 win.
On a night when Texas lost, and
Nebraska struggled, Pettit was happy to
survive this Boulder trip.
“We beat a ranked team on their
court, with us not playing our best
match,” he said. “I think that says a lot.”