This is “Dots,” VolleyballMag.com’s weekly look at 10 things in high school volleyball, past or present, that interest me and hopefully will interest you. Look for Dots every Tuesday until the last high school state championship in November.
• In 2016, Cornerstone Christian of San Antonio was 13-25. That’s not good but it beats the 2015 season, when the Warriors won just one match. How can this be the same school that today is 52-2 and ranks second in the nation?
The answer is easy: Mike Carter.
Carter knew next to nothing about volleyball when the football coach wannabe was hired by Randolph High School in 1990 to coach volleyball. The first officiated high school volleyball game Carter ever saw was the one in which he coached.
Twenty-eight years later, including a long stint at national power Reagan of San Antonio, Carter retired from the public school system. He had almost 900 wins under his belt.
“At that point just I planned to run Alamo Volleyball Club — [he is the current club director] — which is a full time job,” Carter said. “I reached out to Cornerstone about facility usage. Long story short they offered me a great opportunity and five years later I’m still loving it.”
Carter took over as the head coach in 2018 and turned the program around. The Warriors won 17 matches in his first year, 30 in Year 2, went 22-3 during the Covid year and won 43 matches a year ago. This year the team has exceeded 50, one of which was career win No. 1,000, making Carter the first coach in San Antonio history to reach that milestone.
• For as long as I can remember, while private school volleyball largely dominated the other volleyball-rich states, public school volleyball was king in Texas. It did not matter how much talent the privates attracted, put up an Austin St. Michael’s or The Hockaday School or Bishop Lynch or St. Agnes or Parish Episcopal against a top public school and, inevitably, the public school would come out on top.
That has started to change the past couple of years in the Lone Star State, as Prestonwood Christian and Cornerstone Christian have emerged not only as state powers, but as national powers as well.
Carter cited five reasons why privates are finally getting a foothold in the state:
No standardized tests, which he characterized as “needless”
Christ-centered education
Smaller class size
Feeling of security “with all the craziness out there”
Ability to…
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