East Rowan's Alli Corl.

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

GRANITE QUARRY — If you were a movie director and requested a volleyball player as an extra, Hollywood Central Casting would send over East Rowan rising senior Alexandra “Alli” Corl.

Six feet tall, blonde, cheerful and motivated, Corl looks and talks like a volleyball player.

Fortunately for East Rowan and for Corl’s next school, Southern Wesleyan University, Corl not only looks the part, she gets it done on the court.

As a junior, she had 307 kills, third in the South Piedmont Conference. She also accumulated 289 digs, 40 blocks and 45 aces. Those well-rounded stats indicate versatility and the ability to impact a match whether she’s on the front or the back.

Corl wasn’t just an All-Conference and All-County player for coach Sandy Lytton, she was an All-Region player. All-Region girls are special.

As far as her senior year, the sky is the limit for Corl. She could be in the running for things like conference and county player of the year.

“We’ll have another strong team at East,” Corl said. “We lost Cameron Ostle, and she was such an important piece for us, but we can still be very good.”

Corl has talent, good size, good spring, good awareness, but talent doesn’t mean much if it’s not harnessed and polished. She makes sure she gets volleyball reps almost year-round. Even on a June Monday night she was driving to Bermuda Run to practice with her strong club team — Triad United — that competes in tournaments as far away as Florida.

Corl’s parents let Alli and her twin sister, Ava, who is a good East volleyball player but is 4 inches shorter than Alli, sample just about every athletic activity when they were younger.

“I was 9 years old when I had my first experiences with volleyball,” Corl said. “I’m grateful my parents put me in a lot of different sports. I had a chance to play soccer. I played basketball through middle school. I did the pole vault for East track this year (and placed eighth in the South Piedmont Conference Meet). But by the time I got to high school, I knew volleyball was going to be my best sport. And by my sophomore year, I knew I had a chance to play in college if I really worked hard at it. That became a priority. College volleyball became my dream.”

Corl had 202 kills for East as a varsity sophomore. That was encouraging. She followed that success with her stout junior season, not only boosting her kills total by 50 percent, but dramatically improving her percentages. Those percentages are critical. If you’re hitting the ball out half the time, you’re scoring as many points for your opponents as you are for your team.

Corl wound up committing far earlier than she ever dreamed possible. Southern Wesleyan saw her play with he club team and the Warrior coaches began recruiting her as an outside hitter.

While Southern Wesleyan sounds like a school in the middle of nowhere, it’s  part of civilization. It’s only about 10 minutes away from Clemson University.

SWU plays at the Division II level and plays in Conference Carolinas, which has 15 volleyball schools competing in five divisions. Most of the member schools — North Greenville, Barton, Belmont Abbey, UNC Pembroke, Francis Marion, Chowan, Lees-McRae, Mount Olive, etc. — are well known to everyone who follows D-II athletics.

“When I visited Southern Wesleyan, there were a lot of surprises, all of them good,” Corl said. “I loved the dorms, liked the campus, really liked the coaches and the team. Just about everything was exactly what I was looking for in a college. I like where it’s located, not too close to home, but also not too far. I committed early because their offer was just too good for me to pass up. Quite a bit of athletic money and with academic scholarships, it will be close to a full ride. Recruiting can be so stressful, but now that’s over. Now I can just go out there and enjoy my last season of high school volleyball.”

Corl will take a 4.17 GPA into her senior year, so she hasn’t let herself become so obsessed with volleyball that she’s neglected her schoolwork. Her college major isn’t set in stone yet, but she is interested in the legal system, criminology and forensics.