Virginia Beach area best friends with bright futures in volleyball
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Meet Cassidy Cardwell and Aaliyah Hilliard. They are best friends and local volleyball players who have bright futures ahead. Both girls are 15-years-old and students at Ocean Lakes High School.
Cassidy is a freshman at Ocean Lakes. She plays on a travel volleyball team called East Coast Volleyball Club (ECVC) 15Pink out of Virginia Beach. Cassidy has been playing volleyball since she was 6-years-old and plans to play at the collegiate level. Cassidy started out playing on a rec team and moved to a traveling team by age 10. This is her fifth year with travel, but her first as a ECVC member. Last year, Cassidy was named to the All Tournament Team at Ocean City鈥檚 Beachfest. Cassidy previously was primarily a setter, but has transitioned to libero this year. She loves diving for those balls and isn鈥檛 afraid to do whatever is necessary to get a dig!
Aaliyah started her volleyball journey at age 7 on a rec team and with the futures program at Beach Elite. By age 11, she was on a travel team and started with ECVC by age 12. She is now the team Captain for 15Pink. Aaliyah is a member of the volleyball team at OLHS and is a setter on both teams. She has also been a member of Tribe volleyball and plays beach volleyball, both on a team and for fun during the summer. According to her mom, Aaliyah eats, sleeps and breathes volleyball.
ECVC 15Pink is comprised of eleven girls, all in the 15 age range. There are four OLHS students currently on the team. The team鈥檚 head coach, Adreyune Husted is an OLHS graduate. The recently released AES national power rankings have ECVC 15Pink ranked 132 in the nation (out of 2400 teams) and ranked 3rd regionally.
At the JVA Charm City Tournament in Baltimore last month, the team went 7-0 in their age bracket, winning 1st place out of 24 teams, taking home the gold medal. Next stops for the team include Rocky Mount, North Carolina, several local tournaments in Richmond and Virginia Beach, then on to Orlando and Chicago in April and Indianapolis in June.
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