Niagara women’s volleyball inks Alguire
Niagara College’s women’s volleyball team’s first recruit for the 2020-21 season is both local and a little unexpected.
Head coach Steve Dow is hoping Eden product Lauren Alguire will help to fill the void created by the graduation of liberos Taylor Morrison and Ainsleigh Williams.
“Lauren is a local Niagara athlete who we believed flew under the radar,” he said. “She has great body control and kinaesthetic awareness. Lauren will be a great addition to our team and fill the depth we lost at libero with our graduating athletes.”
Alguire feels she may have flown under the radar because she started her travel career with the Niagara Fury before moving to the Niagara Rapids in Grade 10.
“Not a lot of the people had heard of the Fury so I didn’t get a lot of notice when I was on that team,” the 17-year-old St. Catharines native said. “Switching over to a new club, I was also sort of overlooked, not necessarily because of skill but because I wasn’t familiar to them.”
Dow has high hopes for the 5-foot-2 player and believes she will be able to step right in and contribute.
“I think if she competes day in and day out with our starting lib, she will be a big part of our group this year as well as the years ahead,” he said.
Her goals for her rookie season are simple.
“I want to build my skills with this team, get to know everyone and just have a good year,” she said.
She believes she will fit in well at Niagara College.
“As a person, I can be rather quiet, but I feel once I get into game mode, I can be vocal,” she said. “And I am where I need to be on the court and I can get the job done.”
She has already started following the Niagara training program that was send to her and she is looking forward to the entire experience.
“I am excited to meet new people and surround myself with a bunch of really supportive girls.”
She made Niagara her destination for a number of reasons.
“I chose Niagara because I wanted to stay local and I found that they have a really good program for OTA/PTA (occupational therapy assistant/physiotherapy assistant) which is something that I was interested in,” she said. “I thought it would be a good school for me and the hands-on experience if offered made it a really good choice.”
She was also drawn to the school by its women’s volleyball program.
“Every school that I looked at, I was also looking at their volleyball team and I was very impressed with what Niagara has achieved and I am familiar with the girls on the team,” she said. “A few were at Eden and a few were with the Rapids during the time that I played.”
Alguire played two years of junior and two years of senior volleyball at Eden. She was a member of the Eden squad that made it to the quarter-finals of the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Association AA championships last fall.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic ended up cancelling her travel team’s last tournament of the season as well as Ontario Volleyball Association championships.
“It was a hard blow for my team because we were really looking forward to it,” Alguire said. “It was our last year together and would have been great to share those last final things.”
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