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Grand View volleyball gets Arifi

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE - East Marshall senior Juliana Arifi, center, recently signed her National Letter of Intent to continue her academic and athletic career with the Grand View University volleyball program. Seated alongside Arifi were her mother Susan, right, and East Marshall head coach Terri Westendorf.

LE GRAND — The East Marshall volleyball team will go into next season without its all-time leader in kills, kill efficiency and blocks, and Grand View University has become the beneficiary.

Mustang senior Juliana Arifi will travel to Des Moines to continue her academic and athletic career in the fall after she recently signed her National Letter of Intent to play for the national powerhouse Viking volleyball squad.

Her path to play NAIA volleyball has been a rather rocky one, but all the obstacles along the way helped her savor every opportunity she’s had and will continue to get to play the sport she loves.

Arifi has overcome two knee surgeries and a shoulder surgery during a prep volleyball career in which she amassed school-record totals of 869 kills, a .193 hitting efficiency and 216 blocks. Her single-season totals of 349 kills, a .282 kill percentage and 102 blocks are also Mustang records, too.

“It was definitely a dampening process,” Arifi said of all her injuries. “Right when I got cleared [from one surgery] I thought I was going to be playing again and then I got hurt again, and that happened three years in a row. That definitely taught me the importance of playing each game as it’s your last because it definitely could be.”

T-R PHOTO BY ROSS THEDE

Heading to a national power like Grand View has a chance to provide Arifi the team success the Mustangs struggled to achieve during her four seasons of varsity volleyball in spite of her record-setting efforts.

“I’m excited that she’s going to get to go and play someplace and I know she’ll fit into the program and be effective for them immediately,” said East Marshall head coach Terri Westendorf. “She’s got a great arm, she’s got a gun, and it’s going to be nice to see her get started. Hopefully they’ll have some other hitters so it’ll take some of the heat off her so she can actually see what she can do against a single block sometime.”

As the epicenter of East Marshall’s attack for the better part of four seasons, the 5-foot-9 Arifi often found herself swinging into double- and sometimes triple-blocks by the opposition. Though short for the middle hitter position, Arifi still racked up countless kills due to her court vision, leaping ability and raw power.

By the end of her junior campaign, Arifi accounted for 49 percent of the Mustangs’ kills, and her 349 kills in the fall of 2018 ranked 13th in Class 2A and was 63 percent of East Marshall’s offense.

“She’s an all-around player, she’s got some great power and it’s been a lot of fun to watch her play for the last two years,” Westendorf said, “but I look forward to seeing what she can do at the next level.”

Arifi expects to have the opportunity to play as an outside hitter at Grand View, which this past season finished 36-1 with a No. 5 ranking before bowing out in the NAIA National Tournament quarterfinals. The Vikings won the Heart of America Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament titles, featured seven all-conference players, four all-region players and three NAIA All-Americans.

Grand View graduates its top three attackers, so Arifi thinks she’ll have a chance to compete for a role in the lineup.

“I don’t want to step on any toes, I just want to get in there, get a feel for it and as the years go on definitely become a leader,” she said. “They’re really good, but I just wanted to go play. Our team wasn’t very successful in high school but I just wanted to keep playing.”

Even if Grand View isn’t able to maintain its impeccable level of success, Arifi has already dealt with far worse than a few losses on the court. She tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in the early moments of the first baskeball game of 2017, but was healthy enough for softball in the spring of 2018 and ready to rip for her senior season of volleyball. She underwent another knee surgery to repair the same ligament, which she ironically re-injured in the first basketball game of the season again in the winter of 2018, but was back playing club volleyball by the spring.

Shoulder soreness from the fall volleyball season returned during her 18U spring campaign with the Iowa PowerPlex out of Des Moines and resulted in persistent pain and eventually surgery to repair her labrum.

She’s not even sure to what level of ability she can perform on the volleyball court, but is anxious to find out come the fall.

“It’s definitely figuring myself out again, because after every surgery you have to come back and figure out ‘what am I going to do know?’,” she said. “The first knee was like, ‘eh, it happens,’ and then the second knee I was absolutely devastated. I was like, ‘this is not fair at all,’ and then the shoulder absolutely crushed me.”

Getting a chance to continue her volleyball career close to home is all Arifi could want after the way injuries plagued her high school career.

“I went there on a college visit … and as I went to more of them, Grand View kept looking really good,” she said. “I talked to the volleyball coach and I could play, and then I got a full academic scholarship, and that was the icing on the cake.”

Getting the ball to Arifi for the last four years was the cherry on top, so to speak, for the East Marshall volleyball squad.

“Juliana is very driven, she wants big things and I think as long as those are in the spectrum of what the program needs, she’s going to be a great leader,” Westendorf said. “She has a very large drive and wants to fulfill that role.

“Grand View has some great players, so it’s a matter of getting them all put together and Juliana will help them tie up some loose ends. I wish her well and I know she’ll get the support of her parents and grandparents and they’ll be able to go and watch and that’s always awesome that they can do that.”

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