Cameron Aris '11 Recruiting Profile

I am a 5'9" senior setter coming from Cheyenne Wyoming, playing for NORCO volleyball club in Windsor, Colorado. Ever since I was younger I have been playing sports and I was always in a gym because both of my parents coached. I would always have a volleyball in my hands at my father's practices, but I could never be on a volleyball team because I was so young and also because there are no teams in Wyoming. I started off playing basketball because men's volleyball isn't big in Wyoming. I would always practice the things my dad would teach his players, but I never got a chance to implament those teachings in an actual game. Everyone in my has played volleyball, but I was inspired to play when I watched my cousin, Ashley Fornstrom, play at Colorado State University. When I was a freshman I quit basketball and found a club volleyball team in Colorado. I immediately fell in love with the sport; it was like nothing I had ever played before; I was really good at it and became a starter in a very short time. I knew it was a big commitment but I was willing to sacrifice my social life for it; even today I never regret picking volleyball over my high school friends. There is nothing else that I have done that makes me as happy or that allows me to express myself the way volleyball does. So many doors were open to me when I started playing volleyball. Word got around town about me playing volleyball and eventually the Community College Coach in town heard about me and quickly got a hold of me. From the time I was a freshman until the end of the first semester of my senior year, I have been helping to coach the community college in my town. I have improved so much and learned a lot from that coach; he helped me when the rest of my town thought I was strange for playing a "girl's sport." I got to play with the team when they needed a big block, a hard hitter, or a setter who could run an offense well. I would also help run their volleyball academy which was a six month long camp aimed to improve the skills of the high school players in town as well as the younger volleyball players in the area. Volleyball hasn't only helped me to strive to be a better athlete, but a better student as well. When I was a freshman I knew that I was good enough to go somewhere, it was just a matter of working hard on and off the court. I have always been an honor role student, but volleyball helped me to achieve even larger accomplishments. As of the end of my junior year, I was eligible for the Presidential Scholarship awarded to students in Wyoming for maintaining a 3.5 GPA the entirety of their junior year. Also, I was selected to be a part of the National Youth Leaders of America conference that would be held in Washington D.C. Volleyball literally keeps me going everyday. It gives me something to look forward to because I know that I haven't reached my peak yet. There are still things for me to learn and improve on and that alone excites me, it lights a fire in me to achieve something that no one in my state has ever done before. I want to prove people wrong and let them know that what I have been doing for four years isn't a joke; that there is men's volleyball and that it is competitive and that I can compete with players who have been playing for their entire lives in a place where volleyball is accepted and familiar.