Finding her niche

When Ashley Cyr started playing volleyball in sixth grade, she found her niche.

"I had no idea about volleyball, and when they started teaching it, I fell in love with it," she remembered. "I thought, 'This is the coolest thing I've ever done.'"

Six years later, she's going out on top.

Cyr, a 5-foot-7 senior outside hitter for Conway's Lady Cats, is the Log Cabin Democrat's Faulkner County Volleyball Player of the Year for 2008. In 102 games, she recorded 297 kills (2.91 per game), 351 digs (3.44 per game), 35 aces, 12 blocks, 12 block assists and a 95 percent passing average.

"Ashley has been a really strong offensive player for us for the last two years, and she played some on varsity her sophomore year," Conway coach Laura Crow said. "She's very quick and has very good athletic ability. She played a couple of different positions and excelled in both of them."

During 2007, Crow moved Cyr to the middle to fill in a weak area. In 2008, she moved her back to Cyr's more natural position outside.

"She had more chances to attack the ball," Crow said. "Her serve receive is really good. She has a great attitude on the court, and I felt like she was a good leader. She was always positive and always seemed to find a way to get the job done. It takes five other people to get the job done, and she was a team player."

Cyr led the Lady Cats to an 18-7 record that resulted in a 7A-Central conference title and a first-round bye in the Class 7A State Tournament. But for the second straight year, Conway lost to the fourth seed from the West in the quarterfinals.

"Yes, it was a very good season," Cyr said. "We improved a lot. At the beginning of the year we started with Fort Smith Southside and Valley View and didn't do so well (starting the season 1-2), but after those two we realized how hard we needed to work.

"We worked really hard in practice, improved a lot and ended up winning the conference and only losing one match (at Russellville). But of course, in the state tournament we didn't show up we weren't as focused as we should've been. I think we were just so excited about the fact we were going to state, we had been pumping ourselves up all day but we weren't in the mindset that we need to get this done. We were already thinking about the next day's match."

That final loss may haunt her a bit as she said she'd be through with serious volleyball at the end of Fatchmo Volley's Junior Olympic schedule next summer.

"Next year I plan to go to UCA and major in kinesiology," she said. "I was going to play volleyball, but I really want to go to UCA, and I would have to be a passer there, and I'd really rather be a hitter. I'm only 5-7, and their front row is pretty much 6-0 all the way around."

Instead, she'll study to be an athletic trainer and gear down to city league and intramural volleyball competition.

"I'm still kind of dealing with it," she said of the transition. "I'm doing Fatchmo again this year just for fun even though I'm not going to play in college. I don't want to give it up."

Fatchmo, which also includes her CHS teammates Danielle Young and Mary Dunlap, has begun practicing for the 2009 season and will begin tournament play in February. Cyr said she hoped the team would travel to some national tournaments, as it did last year.

She's come a long way since seeing flyers for JO volleyball in sixth grade physical education classes.

"I thought, 'Hmm, volleyball that sounds fun,'" she remembered. "I was tall for my age but really, really skinny. I didn't have any muscle on my body at all."

She'd played slow-pitch softball, and she said she'd always had a high vertical jump the latest measure is 22 inches.

"I was always very athletic," she said, taking after her father, Joe Cyr, who had played quarterback at North Little Rock High School. "I was always very coordinated. I never tripped over myself or anything, and I picked it up pretty quickly.

"I think I was pretty good for a 12-year-old."

Today, she says her weakness is probably her serving.

"I'm not extremely consistent," she said. "When I have my serve, it's a good one, but I don't always have it. My strength is definitely my hitting. I'm fairly consistent there."

Looking back, her attraction to the sport goes beyond the physical requirements.

"I really like how fast-paced volleyball is, how you have to react so quickly to everything and how quickly you have to make decisions," she said.

Cyr never got to play on the same team with Catherine Fowler, the most heralded player to come out of the CHS program who played two years at Arkansas before transferring to Hawaii. But Fowler and all the other Lady Cats who preceded Cyr were her mentors.

"Catherine graduated the year I was coming up to 10th grade, but I've been impressed so much by all the seniors from past years," she said. "When I was in ninth grade, I loved how hard they could hit the ball, and I always wanted to be able to hit like them."

Cyr, also a daughter of Donita Wittenburg, is a member of CHS' Health Occupations Students of America and an A and B student.

She said Crow ran a very good program.

"We are always very fit," she said. "She has us run a lot. We never tire out. When I was in 10th and 11th grade, we were in the old gym with no air conditioning, and that helped us out. Even with the new arena this year, we still went to the old gym and exercised so we would keep fit.

"She always knows exactly what we need to improve on."