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Volleyball ace to play at Florida Tech

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By DAREK SHARP

dsharp@tampatrib.com

Published: June 17, 2009

PLANT CITY - When her volleyball career at Plant City High ended, Ali Boggs didn't exactly take a vacation from the sport. And the extra work has paid off.

Boggs recently signed a scholarship to play volleyball at Florida Tech, a strong Division II program in Melbourne.

A four-year member of the Raiders volleyball team, Boggs greatly bolstered her prospects for a collegiate future by playing with Tampa United, a club team featuring top prep players from the Tampa Bay area.

She definitely logged enough time on the court to fine-tune her skills.

"It got pretty crazy this year," Boggs said. "I ended up playing on two teams. I made the United 1 team which was a pretty big deal for me. Then the United 2 team's setter quit, so I played for them too."

A month after the high school season wrapped up in late October, Boggs embarked upon a club schedule of four practice days per week, generally followed by tournaments that lasted most of the weekend.

"Fridays were my only day off, but usually those were spent getting ready for the trip out of town for the tournament," Boggs said. "But it was so worth it. I learned a lot."

Club season went from December through April.

Chris Catanach, the longtime coach for the University of Tampa, oversees the Tampa United program and Boggs said she benefitted from working with him. In fact, Kerri-Ann Grosso, Boggs' head coach at Plant City during her senior year, helms the United 17-year-old squad.

Not all of Boggs' hard work was on the court. She is an outstanding student, finishing with a weighted grade-point average of 5.63, good enough for 15th in her class.

Boggs also managed to serve about 300 hours of community service during her high school career, many of them helping out with Special Olympics and Best Buddies. She served as a coach for a state champion Special Olympics softball team from Plant City.

The accolades also include being named 2009 prom queen, Miss Plant City High School and a Tampa Tribune Honor Student. She received partial scholarships from nine entities.

"Obviously we are very proud of Ali for all she has done," said her mother, Sheryl.

Softball was Boggs' specialty as a budding youth all-star, but she made the switch to other sports in sixth grade.

"I hurt my arm and was going to have to have surgery if I could continue playing softball. I didn't want that," she said. Boggs played basketball for her first two years at Plant City before switching to volleyball.

Florida Tech will offer Boggs the chance to pursue her desired area of study, civil engineering. And she described meeting Panthers head coach Qi Wang "one of the highlights" of her campus visit in April.

Other schools that offered scholarships were Atlantic Armstrong State in Savannah, Ga. and The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

But Florida Tech definitely had one advantage. It's a relatively short trip across the state for Boggs' parents, Sheryl and Steve. Or they can just wait for the Panthers to take road trips to regular opponents, nearby Tampa, Florida Southern, Eckerd and Saint Leo.

From her future coach's track record, Boggs can look forward to an exciting stay in Melbourne. The year before Wang took over at Florida Tech, the Panthers had a record of 2-30. In his two seasons there, Wang's teams have posted 20 victories each year.

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