Ali Jackson | A disgraceful track record

As any student-athlete can tell you, balancing school with frequent and strenuous practices can be incredibly trying.

For some, it's an uphill battle - there are simply too many things with which to get involved on a college campus, and playing at the varsity level is not worth the time commitment.

And that's normal.

What is not normal is what happens within a program that typically flies under the radar on this campus: Penn Volleyball.

Over the past six years, on average, a mere 28 percent of volleyball players who came in as freshmen stuck with the team for four years. This is not something that the Athletics Department wants you to know. In fact, they would not even give me this statistic.

Athletic Department spokesman Matt Kirsch told me, "That's not something we keep track of." When I asked if he could look through the records and find it for me, he refused. As a result, I had to gather my statistics from Internet rosters, which are notoriously unreliable because many players are erased from the record if they quit halfway through the season, making my estimate somewhat conservative.

While Athletics may not compute these numbers on their own, they are incredibly easy to calculate - all they needed to give me was old rosters.

In fact, representatives from six of the seven other Ivies were more than happy to give me their numbers, probably because they tell a much better story - the average for other Ivies is 79 percent.

With such a gap between schools, the problem must not be the heavy workload but must instead lie within Penn's volleyball program itself.

Head Coach Kerry Carr blames the high attrition rate on many girls leaving to get involved with other activities. In an interview last week, she referenced 2006 Wharton alumna Emily Puro, who "left to pursue her singing."

Puro tells a different story. "I did not quit volleyball to pursue other activities," she said. "I pursued other activities because I knew I had to quit volleyball." She said that playing for Penn made her hate the sport.

Carr is certainly aware of the large number of girls who quit. "I hate it, but I'm a realist," she says. As a result, she brings in recruiting classes that are on average almost double those at other Ivies. "I go for the top four or five," she explained. "And then there's the other three or four."

It's those "other" three or four who get lost in this program. College junior Frannie Felder, an ex-varsity player, wonders why Carr bothers recruiting people if she knows they won't play. What's more, Carr is "just mean," she said. "Kerry made me afraid to wake up in the morning because I knew that I would be yelled at by 3 p.m."

Although Carr describes her bench as "special people," not all of them feel particularly special. One former team member, a College senior who wanted to remain anonymous, described Carr as "manipulative and conniving," adding that "once she doesn't need you, she just ignores you or treats you like shit."

Playing time isn't the only factor contributing to the attrition rate, however. Puro referenced players who started and "still quit because the sport didn't matter to them anymore."

Felder agrees, lamenting the fact that something you are most passionate about can "turn into something you dread just because of one person."

Carr claims that she "remains friends" with all of the girls who have left the team. I don't know about you, but none of my friends make me afraid to wake up in the morning.

Something must be very wrong when so many girls are abandoning what Carr describes as a "family." Clearly, all of these players loved volleyball at some point or they would not have pursued it at the college level. The fact that our program is ruining it for them is atrocious, and Penn cannot in good faith continue to let volleyball bring in so many recruits knowing full well that nearly three-fourths of them will quit. And not only will they quit, but many of them will never play again.

Puro summed it up perfectly: "The passion for a sport doesn't just die out that quickly," she said. "It needs help to fizzle."

Ali Jackson is a Wharton and College sophomore from Cardiff, Calif. Her e-mail address is jackson@dailypennsylvanian.com. All Talk and One Jackson appears on Mondays.

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