Last year as a sophomore playing for Anne Kordes' St Louis University Billikens, Whitney Roth was named Setter-of-the-Year for the Atlantic 10 conference. During her career at KiVA, Whitney Roth won two Junior Olympic Open titles (2001 and 2005) and a couple AAU Golds (2001 and 2003). As a senior, she set Assumption High School to a National Championship during a perfect 43-0 season. Carrie Minogue was only a sophomore that year, but her KiVA club teams have also collected some hardware; a JO gold in 2003, silver in 2005 and 2007, and a bronze in 2006, all in Open competition as well as four AAU championships ('03, '04, '05, and '07). Carrie begins her collegiate career this fall for the Catamounts of Western Carolina University.

The two met in Paris en route to their training camp in Maribor, Slovenia, a small mountain town on the foothills of the Alps, where they will practice with a Romanian National team. Today, they travel to Ljubljana, the capitol of Slovenia, where they will scrimmage the Junior National team from Denmark. Tomorrow they will scrimmage a team from Russia in preparation for the actual four-day tournament named the 2008 European Global Challenge in Pula, Croatia, a seaside town on the Adriatic Sea. Their beginning pool contains teams from Italy, Montenegro and Slovenia. Reseeding will be done based on the first two days of competition, and teams will be placed in either the Brijuni (Gold) or Istra (Silver) Division brackets. After the tournament, Carrie will see the sights in Venice with the WCU contingent for a couple of days before returning home.

Whitney has a weblog that can be accessed at http://slubillikens.cstv.com/sports/w-volley/spec-rel/071808aab.html. Carrie, along with teammate Lizzy Rondone (libero at WCU), and their coach Stephanie Dragan are keeping a diary which can be accessed at the Western Carolina University Volleyball website (here is the link http://catamountsports.cstv.com/sports/w-volley/wcar-w-volley-body.html ). The team also has a journal that can be accessed from the Teams page or the Training Camps (Maribor) page from the tournament website, http://www.bringitusa.com/gc08. Tournament results will also be posted there. John Tawa mentioned on PrepVolleyball's message board that he was working on an article to post on his site as well.

Last year, another KiVA diva, Mindy Flynn competed in Pula. Her picture and last year's results can be accessed at this link