Volleyball tournament a win-win situation

Blaike King was still smiling after playing 14 volleyball games during a two-day stretch Friday and Saturday.

Standing near her mother, Kimberley King, who was getting a massage at the Spokane Convention Center, Blaike laughed off the losses her Carson City, Nev., team endured against some tough opponents.

“Heck, it’s really great just to have the rain. We get so little rain in Carson City,” she said.

Her team got a little rain Saturday, but Spokane’s hotels, restaurants and shops got a downpour of their own, part of an estimated $3.8 million impact the annual Pacific Northwest Qualifier will bring to town.

That derives from the sheer size of the event. This year’s event is the largest ever, spreading over two successive weekends: 155 teams competed this weekend, with 122 more coming next weekend.

For the last nine years, the annual qualifier has been in Cheney at Eastern Washington University. This year, organizers decided to host half of this weekend’s event in downtown Spokane.

“We just realized that we had a great building and we wanted to incorporate the city of Spokane into the flavor of the event,” said Juli Jones, an event coordinator with the Spokane Regional Sports Commission.

Jones buzzed around the center of the Convention Center, trying to take phone calls while games took place on 14 courts in the building’s large central area.

This weekend’s matches, half of which were held in Cheney, featured teams made up of 15-, 16- and 17-year-old girls and wrap up today in the Convention Center. Most of the teams were from Western Washington, the Mountain West, California, Idaho and Montana.

Next weekend’s matches at EWU and at Central Valley and University high schools are for 13-, 14- and 18-year-old players.

With the steady sounds of balls slammed or tipped across the nets, Jones stopped talking for a moment to watch a hotly contested point. “There are really some pretty good players here,” she said.

Teams that win their groups are qualified to compete in the national youth volleyball championships this summer in Minnesota.

Blaike King and her teammates from Nevada were typical of the thousands of players and adults who came this weekend for the matches. Most went to the convention center for several games, then left to shop, find a place to eat or return to a hotel room.

While college basketball teams and fans recently crowded Spokane for a four-day tourney, some believe the annual youth volleyball tourney racks up a larger impact, at least in numbers of hotel rooms occupied.

The NCAA subregional, which drew eight teams and many fans, probably generated more than $4 million in economic benefits, said Eric Sawyer of the Spokane Regional Sports Commission.

But the volleyball qualifier is not far behind, and certainly is one of the largest net impact events in Spokane’s growing roster of sports bonanzas, said Sawyer.

“This event probably generates $3.8 million, based on using averages for how much usually is spent by volleyball teams in general,” he said.

The one regional sporting event Sawyer believes has a higher total of rooms occupied is the Coeur d’Alene Ironman event. He said it recently racked up more than 8,500 room-nights – the measure used by the industry.

April Stark, the event’s competition director, added, “Few of those here this weekend are from Spokane or nearby.”

Many of the teams coming from far away, like King’s, did so not just to qualify for later competition but also to show off talent for the three dozen college coaches who attend the event every year.

Kip Yoshimura, coach of Gonzaga University’s women’s varsity team, came out of the Convention Center on Saturday impressed with what he’d seen.

“It’s a great opportunity to see a lot of players. We’re fortunate, too, in being able to bring them over to our campus, so we can help them see what we have,” he said.

The team King plays on didn’t qualify for the summer championships, but their coach plans to enter two more regional qualifiers over the next two months – in Reno and later in Anaheim, Calif. Winning in either tournament would send them to Minnesota for the championships.

“Yes, we do spend a lot of time going traveling to volleyball matches,” King’s mom said, with a look of resignation. “How do we manage it and afford it? We have to sacrifice some things.” She looked at her daughter, who said: “We never go out and eat at restaurants.”