Slight stature, big results
Athletic gifts - not height - make Kracl a force in middle
After her game-winning block secured the Class 4A volleyball state title for Eudora High on Nov. 3, senior Erin Kracl did not celebrate. She looked around, hugged a few of her teammates and then headed to the baseline to shake hands with her opponents from Augusta.
“Afterwards, I didn’t even know what to do,” Kracl said. “It was kind of a shock because you usually end your season on a loss.”
Kracl may have felt numb, but the 2006 All-Area Volleyball Player of the Year’s skills went a long way toward ensuring Eudora finished its season with a win. During her senior year, she compiled 300 digs, 97 blocks and a Eudora-record 524 kills.
“She’s been a steady force for us,” Eudora coach Jill Stutler said.
A standout middle blocker, Kracl, 17, stands at 5-foot-8, about four inches shorter than a prototypical player at her position. The senior, who excels at striking the ball from differing angles, compensates with a 28-inch vertical leap.
“She’s got great ups,” Stutler said. “Erin just has natural athletic ability.”
That ability, plus experience honed from playing club volleyball from December to July for Kansas City-based Mid America Volleyball, allowed her to start at Eudora during all four years of high school.
But she saved one of her best plays for her final match. With five points remaining in the closely contested second game against Augusta, she hit a ball two feet off the 10-foot-line to ignite a rally.
“It really started to build the momentum for us,” Stutler said, “to get us over the hump and finish the game for us.”
Next year Kracl, a repeat winner of the Player of the Year honor, will compete for the University of South Florida. An aspiring athletic trainer, Kracl, whose personal injury dossier is limited to a sprained ankle suffered during eighth grade, chose South Florida partly because of its strong sports medicine program.
South Florida’s coaching staff, which may move Kracl to another position, also impressed her by attending every one of her club volleyball matches.
“Knowing they were that supportive of me,” Kracl said, “that they wanted me to go to that school that bad was a booster.”
She started playing volleyball six years ago, following her sister Lauren, 20, who led Johnson County Community College to the NJCAA Division II national championship last year.
“After watching her,” Kracl said. “I’d try to go out and play.”
Kracl followed suit with a championship of her own.
Although she did not know how to react immediately following Eudora’s 25-19, 25-22 sweep of Augusta, she and her teammates reveled at home and school. The team went to Haley Epperson’s house for a postgame celebration. Eudora High hosted a pep rally the next Monday and also recognized the state winners during halftime of a Eudora football playoff game.
When Kracl heads to South Florida, located in Tampa, in August, any championship commemoration may take place outside.
“I wanted to go someplace warm with maybe a beach,” she said. “(South Florida) has both.”