Julia Scoles, the gritty Rookie of the Year, still has ‘so much growth to do’

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Tina Graudina has a theory, one she vocalized at dinner on the eve before the AVP Fort Lauderdale finals in July.

“There’s something about the mindset, you throw up, and you go out there, don’t mess with the person who threw up,” Graudina told Julia Scoles and Hailey Harward, her good friends and former teammates at USC. Why they were discussing puking and rallying at dinner, on the night before the biggest day of their AVP careers, there is no really telling. But it turned out to be an awfully prescient — if not inaccurate — conversation.

About 15 hours later, there was Scoles, sitting next to her partner, Geena Urango, at the technical timeout of the finals, down 9-12, against none other than Graudina and Harward. And, of course, she was throwing up.

While much of the rest of the viewers were no doubt wondering how Scoles was going to go out and play not just the rest of the second set, but also the inevitable third to follow, and Dain Blanton and Camryn Irwin discussed the same, Scoles had a vastly different mindset about the matter.

“So I’m there, I’m throwing up in the timeout, and I’m like ‘Oh, yeah, I’m ready!’ ” she said on SANDCAST, barely getting the words out through a fit of laughter. She was not, in fact, as ready as she anticipated, and the superpowers that Graudina alleged come with throwing up never appeared. But one thing was made abundantly clear on that afternoon in Fort Lauderdale: Julia Scoles is one of the toughest players on the AVP. She would go on to finish the match, heat exhaustion and all, and although her and Urango would fall, 21-19, 15-21, 6-15, she did so in a flurry of jump serves, bombed swings, and all-out effort.

“We learned a lot about [Julia] that day,” said Tri Bourne, who was watching while warming up for his own final.

The rest of us may have, but the scene was nothing new to Blanton, Scoles’ coach at USC.

“She’s a warrior, that girl,” he said. He should know. He’d seen a similar scene play out just two months prior, on the eve of the NCAA Championships. The trainer had phoned him in the morning, said that Scoles had been up sick all night.

“I’m like ‘Ah, man, this is a bummer, how’s it going to affect the team?’ ” Blanton recalled thinking that morning. “But then the second thought is, if you want it to happen to anybody, Julia’s the one who…