Tawa’s Girls Club Dots: Fond MEQ memories; Bluegrass happenings

This is “Dots,” VolleyballMag’s weekly look at 10 things in club volleyball, past or present, that interest me and hopefully will interest you. Look for Dots every Tuesday through Junior Nationals this summer.

• The Mideast Qualifier took place this past weekend in Indianapolis. I will always remember MEQ fondly, because it was the first national qualifier I ever attended after starting PrepVolleyball.com back in 2003.

Back in 2003, there were only eight national qualifiers that had Open divisions. Sunshine, Windy City, Salt Lake City Showdown and Show Me did not yet exist. The Pacific Northwest Qualifier in Spokane was for Club divisions only. Crossroads, which is no longer a qualifier, was in Kansas City, as the Colorado Convention Center in Denver underwent renovations. The Northeast Qualifier, now in Philly, was in Baltimore. Lone Star, now in Dallas, was in Austin. Far Westerns, now in Reno, was in Sacramento. The SCVA qualifier, now in Las Vegas and now known as “Red Rock Rave,” was in many locations across Southern California. The Tampa Bay Qualifier, now in Atlanta and now known as “Big South,” was in Tampa on the Gulf Coast.

Northern Lights was one of the last qualifiers every spring and has been in Minneapolis this whole time.

MEQ, one of the first qualifiers every spring, has always been in Indy, near the famous St. Elmo Steak House and its renowned shrimp cocktail, the convention center and other points easily accessible by a series of interconnected skywalks, the Big Ten basketball tournament inevitably taking hotel rooms and restaurant reservations from those of us there for volleyball…Those are my memories of my first MEQ qualifier, along with the outpost in the middle of the convention center where cheap hot dogs and chicken strips could be had, but be careful, because Krissy Brown, the 5-4 dynamo for Cleveland Volleyball Company; was launching salvos and your head was in play if not paying attention.

Good memories…

• Munciana Volleyball Club was a contender in those Open divisions at my first MEQ. So, too, was Circle City, the host club of the Mideast Qualifier. Those two were the first clubs organized in the nation’s heartland 40 or so years ago and, being located no more than an hour apart, were fierce/friendly rivals.

Without those two clubs, there would likely never have been PrepVolleyball.com, because those coaches were so entertaining with their swipes at each other that they built a following for volleyball…