Sport: Volleyball
Position: Middle hitter
Class: Sophomore

Her story: At 6-2, Mariani strikes a figure on the court impressive enough to get recruitment calls from the likes of TCU, Georgia Tech, Berkley, Stanford and Baylor – and she’s still just a 15-year-old, second-year varsity player.

Mariani was honored last year as the Colts’ Most Improved Player, racking up 64 kills and 14 digs.

After losing a number of seniors to graduation in 2009, Mariani said she definitely feels the need to be a leader. “I see myself as a team leader by what I do on the court, not such much verbally,” she said.

Her goal: To make the Junior Olympic volleyball team.

Her coach: “She doesn’t act like she’s being recruited,” said Arlington head coach Sue Causey. “She’s just a great, humble kid.”

Fun fact: Mariani is also a professional model and has appeared in advertisements for JCPenney and Belk.

Tiffany Baker
Olivia Okorro
Rachel Buckley
Loren Byerly
Taylor Cembalisty
Bailey Clampitt
Emma Dridge
Kristen Favre
Bria Gambrell
Chandler Hatton
Alayna Jackson
Kendall Koldstat
Kate Klepetka
Katelyn Labhart
Addasson Lamb
Ashley Mariani
Marissa Olivares
Morgan Thompson
Paxton Wade
Haley Wehring
Kendall Yoes

Congratulations Ladies…Way to go Premier!!!

Brad Lawson makes his return to Dallas and the Dallas Premier coaching staff for his 3rd season as the coach of 13 Mizuno. He has spent the last 2 years in his home state of New Mexico where he worked as the Training Coordinator and Master Coach for New Mexico Juniors. Brad started his coaching career in the Houston area as a former college assistant coach and recruiting coordinator (Alvin College – 3 years) ; he also spent four years as the women’s club team head coach and as a volunteer assistant coach for Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. 

 Brad has spent part of his volleyball career working with Andy Reitinger at developing and implementing logistical solutions for large tournaments. Some of their clients include entities such as USA Volleyball, Southern California Volleyball Association and Club Sports of North Texas just to name a few. Brad has been coaching volleyball for the past 14 years and his tournament and coaching experience will prove to be an invaluable asset with Dallas Premier. 

Over the last couple of years Brad has spent a great deal of time working to grown the sport of volleyball. He along with Marc Swindle and Matt McShane have developed grassroots and youth volleyball programs that have proven to be extremely successful. Brad spends part of his time working with children and young adults by running camps and clinics across the nation and also working Division I volleyball camps such as The Air Force Academy, The University of New Mexico and Texas Christian University. 

Brad is currently a IMPACT and CAP level II certified coach.

Darren is entering his Third season as head coach at St. Marks School of Dallas. Prior to coming to St. Marks he had coached for three years at the Episcopal School of Dallas as the Freshman coach and Varsity assistant finishing there with an SPC Championship in 2008. Over the last 6 years, Darren has been a coach for Dallas Summit and Dallas Premier having qualified for nationals twice.

Before moving to Dallas, Darren was an assistant coach at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, TX. While coaching there, Darren also coached club volleyball at Austin Juniors where he qualified his 15’s team to the national invitational.

As a player, Darren spent 2 years at Columbia College. In those two years, the team was the national runner-up in 1999 and the national champion in 2000. He learned much of his coaching technique there playing for Wayne and Susan Kreklow, who are now the Co head coaches at the University of Missouri.

He made an effort to play in college, even though the beach court in McKinney wasn’t very highly recruited, and became instantly familliar with the college recruiting process. Making his own video and calling several coaches all over the country, he finally found a home at the University of La Verne in Orange County California. La Verne played in the Pac 10 and Steve played outside against UCLA, USC, UC San Diego, Peperdine, Univerity of Pacific, and Stanford among others. Several of his opponents went on to play for the US National Team.

While in California, he decided to walk to the nearby High School and ask if they needed help. A week later, he was the JV coach for Bonita High School. This began the transition of his love affair with the game to a love affair with coaching the game. It also launched his insatiable appatite for knowledge of coaching and of the game itself as the game transitioned to the introduction of the slide, the libero, let serves, and rally scoring.

When he returned to Texas the following year Steve was the captain of the Dallas Baptist University men’s club team and the team played in the Texas men’s collegiate club league. At this time, Steve began his Texas coaching carreer at Trinity Christian Academy and began coaching club with Dallas Summit, coaching a 15′s team for the young club. For the next five years, Steve coached with Dallas Summit at the 15′s level. Traveling all over the country and seeing many of his athletes go on to college scholarships with Division I, II, and III schools, he also finished in the gold bracket at ovef 80% of the qualifiers he went to.

During this time Steve became a varsity high school coach for the first time at First Baptist Academy winning over 50% of his matches with the program over a three year period for the first time in the school’s history. He spent one year coaching at the University of North Texas and playing for the men’s club team there. During this time, the Lady Eagles finished 5th in the conference tournament which was their highest finish at that point in ten years.

Steve moved to Arlington and took up residence at TAV and Ft. Worth Nolan Catholic school shortly after he graduated with his degree in Biblical Studies from the Criswell College. At TAV, Steve coached primarily in the 15′s age group qualifying 5 teams for nationals (4 of them through National Qualifiers), finishing in the Gold Bracket of the qualifiers he participated in over 90% of the time, finishing 3rd in the USAV National Tournament with the 152 team for TAV, and winnig the Lone Star Qualifier twice.

Looking for more, he moved back to the Plano area and came back home to Premier and led the 16 Mizuno team to a 5th place finish at the USAV Junior National Tournament in Miami. He has done over 2,000 lessons and has played and coached at some of the highest levels. However, he also recognizes the benifit of staying close to the fundamentals. He qualified TAV’s 13′s team his last year there and still has an affinity for spending time with the younger and lower level athletes. He is has been in charge of the camps at VIP for the past two years and has seen over 500 athletes come through the summer camp programs.

Locally, Steve has coached high school, college, club 13′s-18′s, camps, summer leagues, at Nationals, top 20 prospects, beginners, and other coaches. He has also been on the Junior Board of Directors for the North Texas Region for 3 years as the Vice President of Competition. In this capacity, as well as in his role at TAV and Dallas Premier, he has directed and run all levels of tournaments from one day events to power leage events and even the North Texas Regional Bid Tournament.

Since 1992, he has been coaching or playing volleyball.

Eight of those years were for South Shore Juniors Volleyball Club where he has qualified for USA Junior National Championships five times, producing 2 All Americans and finishing as high as 5th in the Nation twice. Geoff has coached or trained 75 Seniors who all received scholarships to play volleyball in college. For the past few years he had 10 players selected to PrepVolleyball.com’s top 250 Seniors in the Nation. 8 Players were selected to the Lonestarvolleyball.com All Texas Team. In 2005, three of Kiessling’s former players competed in the NCAA Division I National Championships.

One year was spent with Texas Tornados where as the Head Coach his team qualified for the Junior Olympics and won the Bronze Medal in the 18 American Division and three of his girls were selected as All Americans.

Kiessling is known as one of the top technical trainers. Geoff has trained many athletes from all levels of High Schools, Clubs and Colleges in Texas as well as surrounding states.

Coach Kiessling is also very involved with USA Volleyball. Geoff has been selected for the past 8 years to train athletes from all over the country in High Performance and Development camps held by USA Volleyball. Kiessling has trained with 2004 Olympic Coach Toshi Yoshida and current National Team coach Jenny “Lang” Ping. Kiessling was also selected as an apprentice coach for USA Volleyball for the High Performance program. Geoff was involved in the training of the USA HP A1 Team that participated in the USA High Performance Championships where his USA HP Red won the Gold Medal despite playing up in an older age group. As well as coaching, Kiessling also works on the technical side of USA Volleyball as a member of the USA Volleyball Logistics staff.

Kiessling was asked to help with training the USA Junior National Team as they prepared for the NORCECA Continental Junior Women’s Championship in Winnipeg, Canada. He also helped with the 2000 Olympic Team tryouts in San Diego, California.

Kiessling was also chosen to represent the Lone Star Region as a Coach for the High Performance Program for the first 4 years of its conception. Before being asked to work with USA HP Program.

Geoff is a current and active member of the American Volleyball Coach’s Association and is CAP Level II Certified Coach.

A native of San Antonio, he began coaching as a student assistant at the University of Texas-San Antonio, while at the same time coaching for Alamo Juniors, where his teams qualified for the Junior Olympic National Championships each of his three years there. From there, Meyer went on to become the top assistant coach at UTEP.  During his stay in El Paso he also served as a coach for, and technical advisor to, the El Paso Juniors volleyball club.  He had numerous players at Alamo and El Paso Juniors who went on to play collegiately at all levels.  Meyer also conducted several sessions of the Mizuno Coaching Clinic series for local and regional coaches in El Paso.

While at the University of Tennessee he helped return the program to national prominence, evidenced by the Lady Vols’ selection and participation in the NCAA tournament after a seven year absence.  Meyer’s efforts at Tennessee helped produce seven players who are listed in the Lady Vols All-Time Top 10 in several statistical categories of their record books.

Brian also traveled to Europe to coach an all-star team of former US college players on a tour competing against several top European professional clubs in Germany, Belgium, Austria and The Netherlands.

An accomplished camp clinician, Meyer coordinated and coached the summer camps at UTEP and Tennessee, while also coaching camps at several universities, including Minnesota, Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.

Every program that Mike has been involved with has reached post-season play. Mike helped lead UCO to its first ever berth in the NCAA Div II National Tournament, helped Seward County to a 5th place finish in the National Tournament, guided OU to the NCAA Tournament and coached the University of Tennessee to two Sweet 16 appearances, one appearance in the Elite 8, culminating with a spot the NCAA Final Four in 2005.

His involvement and dedication to the sport of volleyball have not been limited to the collegiate game. Minnis, along with former OU Head Coach Miles Pabst and many others, began a quest to enhance volleyball at high schools throughout the state of Oklahoma. His efforts obviously paid immediate dividends, as the number of high schools sponsoring the sport of volleyball increased from 40 in 1993 to more than 100 in 1999.

In 1990, Minnis served on the Oklahoma Region United States Volleyball Association (USVBA) Board of Directors, a position he held until 1992. From 1996 to 1998, he was an advisor to the director of the Youth National Team. In addition, Minnis served as the training site coordinator for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and assisted with tryouts for the 1996 Youth National Team.

Minnis is the co-author of “Fundamentals of Volleyball,” a teaching tool for the Oklahoma High School Association. Along with Pabst, Minnis also completed three skill videos aimed at high school and club coaches.

Mike has qualified each of his teams for the Junior Olympic National Championships, including past 2 seasons in the 17 Open division as well as finishing 3rd and winning Lone Star Qualifier this season. Mike also coordinated the PrepVolleyball Unsigned Senior Showcase in Las Vegas, which featured over 600 of the nation’s unsigned seniors.