Player of the Year Divine brings renaissance for Greencastle

Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Greencastle junior Olivia Divine goes up for an attack during the sectional tournament match against Edgewood. Diviine was named the 2013 Putnam County Player of the Year on Tuesday. (Banner Graphic/GRANT WIEMAN)

In a season of change for the Greencastle volleyball team, the Tiger Cubs added a new coach, climbed to a county championship and 17-13 overall record.

They also added junior Olivia Divine, a transfer from Warsaw who became a revelation, leader and the 2013 Putnam County Player of the Year.

While Divine is a phenomenal athlete, playing all over the court and working as an outside hitter and on the back row, she is just a one sport athlete for the Tiger Cubs.

Her passion for volleyball leaves no time for anything else.

"It's so fun," Divine said. "There's so many little bits that you only get after playing it for years and years. It's just intricate. You never know what's going to happen."

Divine began playing on "a little team" when she was in fourth grade, joined a club team in Warsaw in fifth grade and has been on club teams every winter since.

"I loved it," she said. "My whole family played it, so I just played it all the time. I didn't have time for anything else."

Divine's sister, Diana, started as a social studies teacher at Greencastle High School in the fall of 2012 and Olivia started visiting Greencastle last spring.

She met a few girls then, started playing with them in the summer and, along with first-year head coach Maggie Walters, set to turning around the Tiger Cubs' volleyball program.

"We definitely wanted to win county, so that was nice, and we wanted to make it as far as we could in conference and sectionals, which we were so close in conference," Divine said of her team's 4-1 West Central Conference season. "We wanted to definitely be a .500 team, and we did that. So we accomplished a lot of what we wanted to this year, it's all just about making ourselves better for next year."

The most important part to success on the volleyball court, she said, is chemistry with teammates. That came easy for the Tiger Cubs this year.

The junior-heavy roster was in sync from the jump, partially because of a focus from Walters during the preseason and partly because of the girls' personalities.

"We all just got along," Divine said. "I've never had a group of girls on the court that just completely got along and knew what the other person was going to do. We were a team and it just meshed.

Olivia Divine

"...I love the team because you can't win without a good group of girls that all just mesh well. It's basically a team sports, through and through, so that's just fun."

The joy Divine and her teammates brought to the court was contagious, which helped the team draw in spectators and overcome bad days, physical and emotional.

That will only improve next year, Divine said, because the longer the team plays together the better they'll be able to anticipate one-another's movements and deal with someone having an off-night.

"Everyone has their off days and everyone deals with their off days differently," she said. "The longer you're with someone the better you know how to react to them and help them be a better player."

Divine and the Tiger Cubs didn't have immediate success. The team started the season 0-3 before picking up its first win against Sullivan.

That success helped the girls see tangible success. Things rolled from there, culminating in a win at the county tournament where the Greencastle beat Cloverdale and North Putnam.

"The first win was just the first win, but it was the first hurdle we made it through; the first test," she said. "I loved winning county because we played so well that day. ... I cannot think of someone who did not play amazing that day and it was just so much fun."

Divine said she didn't come into the season with many individual goals. (90 percent accuracy on her serves was one, which she narrowly missed). She just wanted to help the team in way she could.

That turned out to be staying on the court through every rotation. She was one of the best defenders in the county when she played on the back row and the most fearsome hitter on the outside.

Divine missed a few games in the middle of the year after injuring her knee (it's better now), and when she returned some of her explosiveness as a leaper was reduced.

She adjusted her hitting, setting up further back, and focused more on defense and passing, her favorite aspect of the sport, she said.

That ability to make adjustments is what sets her apart, her coach said.

"She's really coachable," Walters said. "She listens to what we say, which is helpful, and she makes adjustments when she needs to. ... She just adjusts quickly. We know right after we tell her something she's going to make the next play for us."

Divine is taking some time off, recovering from the year, but conditioning (agility, core strength, upper body strength, improved vertical, etc.) for next year begins in January.

That year-round commitment has helped turn Divine into the 2013 Putnam County Player of the Year.

Click here to view the all-county team and honorable mention selections.

Click here to view the postseason awards.

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