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New Life Academy's connection on the court

By PATRICK JOHNSON, Special to the Star Tribune, 10/18/14, 6:15PM CDT

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Years of playing volleyball together helped New Life’s Kara Stenerson and Abby Thor form a special bond.


New Life Academy setter Kara Stenerson (9) and middle hitter Abby Thor (12), teammates the past five years, have led the Eagles to a 27-2 record this season. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune)

 

The connection between setter and hitter on a volleyball court is crucial. It takes precise timing, intuition and a feel for each others’ game.

At New Life Academy, setter Kara Stenerson and middle hitter Abby Thor know each other like sisters after taking the court together the past five years. The duo now has the burgeoning Eagles hitting their stride.

“There’s definitely an advantage because we know each other so well,” Stenerson said. “It’s really something you can’t describe. It’s a good feeling.”

New Life is 27-2 this season and currently have a 25-match winning streak. The Eagles are ranked No. 4 in Class 1A in the latest coaches’ poll.

Stenerson and Thor, both juniors and team captains, are in their fourth year of varsity volleyball. They first played together for New Life in seventh grade. Both were on the Eagles’ junior varsity team that year and Junior Olympic team that summer. This past offseason, the pair played for the prestigious Minnesota One (M1) volleyball program out of Bloomington, honing their skills and building their bond.

“We support each other,” Thor said. “We know how to help each other improve and we make each other better and the team better. It’s awesome.”

Stenerson called the 6-2 Thor “a powerhouse.” On the other hand, Thor said the team “would be lost” without the 5-8 Stenerson and her defense and passing ability.

Stenerson leads NLA with 785 assists on the season, good for 27 per game, to go along with 199 digs, which is second on the team. Thor has a team-best 51 blocks and 55 aces, along with 275 kills — the Eagles’ second-highest total.

“They’re really fun to watch,” said New Life coach Wally Bomgren, a former coach at Woodbury and Apple Valley high schools.

New Life Academy, a Christian-based private school in Woodbury, has a total enrollment of 715 from preschool through 12th grade, but only 245 from ninth to 12th.

Most of the girls on the Eagles’ volleyball team have been at NLA since kindergarten. Bomgren, Stenerson and Thor each believe the time they have spent together and friendships they have established have paid dividends on the court.

“We go to a really small school,” Stenerson said. “We’re teammates and we’re really close off the court. We have a bond that’s unbreakable.”

Stenerson, Thor and fellow junior captain Abby Gorter, an outside hitter who leads the Eagles in kills with 207 and digs with 208, have all played varsity for NLA since eighth grade. In fact, this year’s roster doesn’t look much different from what it did two years ago, when the Eagles finished 18-10-1 overall and in second place in the Minnesota Christian Athletic Association.

“Back in eighth grade, I don’t think we really saw this coming,” Stenerson said. “Last year, though, we started to believe we had something special.”

Thor said winning the Class 1A Showcase Tournament in Burnsville in September — an invitational drawing 11 of the top 20 teams in Class 1A — was an eye-opener. The Eagles took down Central Minnesota Christian, the No. 2 team in Class 1A in the coaches’ poll, for the championship. Stenerson earned tourney MVP honors, while Thor and Gorter were named to the all-tournament team.

“That’s when it kind of hit us, I think,” Thor said. “We put on our game faces for that one and played very solid. We just keep gaining confidence.”

The Eagles aren’t resting on their laurels, however.

The NLA volleyball team has only one conference championship in school history, in 1996, and has never been to the state tournament. But the Eagles’ goals this year include both of those benchmarks — and beyond.

“Our goal is to win the conference championship, win the section and win state,” Thor said. “We’ve all bought into that and we’ve been working hard to make them come true.”

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