Jan. 9, 2007

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. - Three talented student-athletes have signed National Letters of Intent with the UC Santa Barbara women's volleyball team it was announced by head coach Kathy Gregory. High school seniors Dana Vargas (Seal Beach, Calif./Saint Joseph HS), Stacey Schmidt (Huntington Beach, Calif./Marina HS), and Kasey Kipp (Newport Beach, Calif./Corona del Mar HS) are all expected to join the Gauchos for the fall 2007 season.

Dana Vargas, a 5'7" setter, led Saint Joseph High School to the 2006 Del Rey League Championship under coach Mike Hinton for which she earned First Team All-League accolades and was awarded a Long Beach Press Telegram First Team Dream Team honor. The Seal Beach, Calif. native was a 2005 First Team Sierra League selection and a second team pick in 2004 after helping her team to the 2004 CIF Division 3-AA semifinals for which she received Press-Telegram Second Team Dream Team honors.

In addition to her outstanding high school play, Vargas, who plays club ball for Cal Jr's under coach Melissa Ohta, earned Most Valuable Player honors at the 2005 16 Nationals after leading her team to a gold medal finish. Vargas descends from a family of stellar athletes, her mother Debbie Green, a former Olympic silver medalist and inductee of the Volleyball Hall of Fame, is the assistant coach at Long Beach State where her older sister Nicole plays as a setter. Her father is also a two-time Olympian, having played on the 1980 and 1984 USA Olympic Water Polo Team.

"Dana Vargas is the top recruit we are getting because she is one of the top setters in the country. She comes from the best background and she is the type of player you can build a program around. Dana will have an immediate impact because she is mature beyond her years and she will have instant credibility because of her ability to run an offense. Again I am asking a lot of a freshman, but she comes with experience unmatched by any freshman so we are very fortunate to have her able to play," commented Gregory.

Stacey Schmidt will come to Santa Barbara via Marina High School where the 6'3" opposite hitter and middle blocker has led the Gladiators in kills the past two seasons and been named her team's MVP. The Huntington Beach, Calif. native is a three-year varsity letter winner and a two-year team captain who earned back-to-back Sunset All-League Team honors in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, Schmidt helped lead her team to a CIF Division IA appearance under coach Brad Simmons. Talented on the court, as well as in the classroom, Schmidt has earned scholar-athlete distinction all four years of high school.

Schmidt has played club volleyball with TCA for the past four years helping lead her team to the 2006 National Girls Junior Olympics Open Championship in addition to earning All-Tournament honors after helping her TCA 16-1 team to victory at the 2005 Junior Olympics Invitational.

"Stacey is a very talented, physical player. We need to improve in our size and she is going to help us in that area. She is going to train mainly to play the middle and she will also compete to play the right side. She comes from one of the best club programs, TCA, which won a national championship. Physically she has some great potential, she touches over 10 feet and that is very good so we are looking for her to have a chance to play right away," said Gregory.

Rounding out the list of signees is 6'2" middle blocker Kasey Kipp, a two-time All-Pacific Coast League selection who helped the Corona del Mar volleyball team to league championships in 2004 and 2006 along with a CIF Division II AA Championship in 2004 and a CIF finals appearance in 2006 under coach Bill Christiansen. In 2005, the Sea Kings made it to the state quarterfinals. In her career at Corona del Mar, Kipp has twice been named Most Improved Player, once named best offensive player and most recently picked as her team's best blocker.

The Newport Beach, Calif. native has played club with Laguna Beach and Orange County Volleyball, helping Laguna to back-to-back top-five finishes at the Reno Tournament in 2004 and 2005 and first place at the Fiesta Classic in 2006. Kipp also helped Orange County to an eleventh place mark at Reno in 2006.

"Kasey Kipp is a 6'2" middle and comes from another very good program: Orange County. She is very physical and will also play in middle for us. They (Kipp and Schmidt) are both from top club programs and are very physical and that is our biggest concern is improving our size so they will both play middle," remarked Gregory.

"Our immediate concern was to bring in some size and we had to bring in a setter. Overall this was a big year because we lost a lot with the seniors graduating. We had to rebuild and we are rebuilding with some physical talent as well as some skill and a lot of new players."