Story Photos
 Mark Morris senior Rebecca Haight pounds a kill during a practice at Ted M. Natt Court. Roger Werth / The Daily News
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MM's Haight is mastering the art of the kill
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 7:00 PM PST
By Ben Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleRebecca Haight was crazy about soccer when she entered the fifth grade.
Then her mother, Cindy Langhorne, decided to practice a little tough love. The kind that puts homework before cartoons and makes you finish your brussels sprouts.
With a nudge from Haight’s fifth-grade P.E. teacher, Jocelyn Price, Langhorne informed her daughter that she would be playing volleyball for the Cowlitz 12s.
“I didn’t want to. I just liked soccer. I was scared,” said Haight, a Mark Morris senior who is on the verge of collecting her second consecutive league MVP award, and leading the undefeated Monarchs in the district playoffs. “I didn’t want to do it. But my mom made me.”
It is safe to say, as Haight prepares to wrap up a stellar high school career, that she has forgiven her mother for forcing her to leave a sport she was dominating on the ground and learn one that is played in the sky.
But the thousands of opponents who’ve stared into the barrel-end of Haight’s kill pose will curse the day Haight made the switch.
“I just love it. I’ve loved it since my first day,” Haight said of volleyball. “I can’t explain it. It’s my life.”
“She lives it,” added MM coach Lisa Verage. “She breathes it.”
And she owns it.
Haight is a four-year starter at Mark Morris and owns school volleyball records that may never be broken. She has improved every season — “And she was very strong coming in as a freshman,” Verage said — and developed defensive instincts and passing chops, which nearly rival her singular take on volleyball’s most definitive, emphatic art form: the kill.
At the net, Haight has become one of the most effective, lethal finishers in recent area history. But it’s her style — an explosion that seems fluid and effortless until the climactic impact of palm to ball — that will haunt foes and stir partisan nostalgia long after her records are faded print.
Haight’s vertical jump is 24 inches, but that figure, which is gauged from a stationary, straight-upward, two-footed jump, does not account for the extra lift she generates with her explosive approach and clockwork mechanics.
“And on adrenaline,” Verage added, “it could be more.”
Haight flies around and above the court with a ferocity that suggests rage, but is merely laser focus. Sometimes, if Mark Morris is behind or if she gets blocked, Haight plays with anger and hits the ball harder than usual.
But her baseline mental state is pure concentration. Cerebral. Controlled. Premeditated.
There is, after all, a science behind the smash. Timing must be perfect, Haight said. The defense is not a wall to break down but a key to unlock, so that “knowing where to put the ball,” she added, is more important than putting it there emphatically.
“You have to read your spots,” Haight said.
Then there is a meticulous mechanical progression, including the proper footwork, synchronized arm movement, mid-air balance and a full-body finish that must be calibrated to martial arts precision.
“Rebecca is a natural athlete, and that in itself has led to her success,” Verage said. “But she has really worked at her game. She has gotten smarter about her shots. She sees blocks. She can jump and she sure loves that hard swing, but she has gotten very smart in her decision-making at the net.
“She is definitely a competitor,” she added. “She brings awesome energy to the team, and she is very intense. But above all, she has matured and grown as a player, leader and a competitor. She is hard on herself — too hard — most of the time. But that is what learning and having a competitive nature is all about.”
Haight has played volleyball year-round since she was 12. Her experience in the Cowlitz Volleyball Club, where the tutelage of coaches like Bill Marshall and Marcy Gilchrist are as invaluable as the cooperation with elite players from all around the area, has expedited her growth as a player and expert on the arcana of the game.
“She never gets silly,” said Verage. “She’s all business, all the time.”
Haight set the school record for kills in a season with 326 as a junior, and has 215 this year. In nine of the Monarchs’ matches, she has recorded double-doubles with kills and digs. She has two triple-doubles (kills, digs, service points) and has become one of MM’s best, most relentless defenders and passers.
She also remains a deadly server, and served the second-most aces in MM season history last season.
Haight’s individual achievements must be appreciated within a team context, she insisted. Her teammates are her ballast and her emotional support — and she has played on very good teams with excellent players in each of her four Monarch campaigns.
“I’m very focused on the court, and it is my team that keeps me that way,” Haight said. “We all calm each other down.”
When Mark Morris lost two games in a league match against Hockinson last Thursday, Haight was “almost in tears.”
The Monarchs had not lost a single game in match play up to that point, and Haight “almost thought (MM’s undefeated season) was over.”
“But everyone stepped up,” she said. “That is what we do. We back each other up and calm each other down.”
Volleyball has helped Haight to be more outgoing off the court, where she describes herself as laid-back. She hopes to stay on the court in college and land a scholarship to a Division I or II program, while pursuing a future as an emergency room nurse.
She could keep volleyball on the side, too.
“This year, we’ve had an opportunity to visit some middle schools,” Verage said. “Rebecca has really taken a knack to seeing the individual pieces of each players’ game, and helping them improve their skills. She’d be a good coach. A tough one, but a good one.”
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