Doing It For Mike Volleyball Team May Attend Competition Without Coach Mike Sacco, Who Is Recovering From A Hit-And-Run Accident

Danielle Barbieri is official cheer girl for the Performance Under-12 All Out volleyball team.

And she is busy planning an extraspecial chant to precede each of her team’s matches at the 1999 Junior Olympic Volleyball Championships June 30 to July 2 in New Orleans.

It will go out to an extra-special person.

The team probably will be without its coach, Mike Sacco, at nationals.

“We will probably do `Do it for Mike,”’ Barbieri said, noting that she and her teammates also plan to wear matching hair ribbons in his honor.

Sacco, a 47-year-old maintenance lead technician for the state Department of Transportation, was badly hurt in a hit-and-run accident along Interstate 90 on May 6.

He was in the hospital for 3-1/2 weeks and returned home May 28.

He is recovering from a broken left leg, has four plates holding his pelvic bones together and a rod holding his left tibia together. He also broke three ribs, fractured his right hip and had surgery on his right knee.

Sacco is working out each day and is undergoing physical therapy. It is difficult for him to spend long periods of time upright in a wheelchair.

Yet he said he has been pleased with his improvement and still hopes to make the trip. He hasn’t canceled his flight and hotel arrangements. The team leaves Monday.

“I’m still leaving that open,” said Sacco, who last week attended his first practice since the accident. “If I’m not going, I will be at the airport to send them off.”

Voni Tombari will assume coaching duties if Sacco can’t make it. She owns Performance Volleyball Club and has been filling in for Sacco.

It wasn’t an easy decision for the players to go ahead with plans for nationals knowing their coach probably would be staying home in Spokane.

It took them a week to decide.

They said they knew it wouldn’t be the same without Sacco and his trademark slam of the notebook.

He’s the one who can read each one of them and can always tell when something’s wrong. He’s the one who doesn’t stand for disagreements and requires his players to talk and work out their problems.

“There were times I didn’t want to go without him,” middle blocker Kelly Mastor said.

But they figured Sacco might have felt worse if they had decided to skip the tournament.

“There was still a piece missing, that he wouldn’t be with us,” said Marissa Socha, a setter and outside hitter.

“But we earned it so we should go and bring something back for him.”

“You only get this chance once,” said Barbieri. “To give it up would be wrong.”

Sacco agrees.

The Shadle Park High graduate has been coaching club volleyball for five years and said it’s rare to find a group of athletes at this age so serious about a sport and finding ways to improve.

“They’re good now,” said Sacco, also the freshman volleyball coach at Gonzaga Prep. “That was the fun of this season. They were working hard in practice and going to tournaments and I was just sitting on the bench and enjoying watching them play.”

The team practices twice a week for two or three hours and has its own conditioning routine.

All Out qualified for nationals through a regional tournament April 24-25 in the Tri-Cities, placing third out of 20 teams from Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Montana.

At nationals, the team will participate in two days of pool play, then be seeded into one of four brackets.

Sacco said he plans to go over lineup ideas with Tombari if he doesn’t go.

He isn’t sure when he will return to work but it will be on a part-time basis.

“It’s kind of a slow process for an old warrior like me to listen to his body,” he said. “But I’m lucky to be alive. …The overriding emotion these weeks has been gratitude. My friends, family, coworkers, and the volleyball community have been so supportive.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: PLAYERS Performance U-12 All Out volleyball players from the North Side (with position and school): Jelsomina Fruci, outside hitter, St. Charles Shantel Haugen, setter/outside hitter, St. Charles Cydney Hoffnagle, right-side hitter, St. Aloysius