Relationship building is often described as the most important part of recruiting at every level of athletics, but it is especially true for teams that live outside the big money world of basketball and football. For sports such as volleyball and for programs similar to the one that the coaching staff at Creighton have helped to build in Omaha, sometimes the players and their families recruit you. Sometimes when a coach goes to search for one player, they come back with two. That was the case with Ankeny, Iowa standouts Megan Ballenger (#19) and Jaali Winters (#5) — two key members of the Bluejays’ nationally ranked 2015 recruiting class (show at top).
The relationship between Megan and Jaali, according to them, goes back all the way to when they were in kindergarten together. They played on the same club team growing up and were also teammates for two years at Ankeny High School. Then the school split into two, and Jaali went to the new Ankeny Centennial High School for her junior and senior years. Prior to the split, Creighton associate head coach Tom Mendoza went to see Ballenger play in a high school match. She was one of Creighton’s top targets at the time. He returned to Omaha with more than just one scouting report.
“He came back and told me that we’re going to want Ballenger,” Creighton head coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth recalled. “But there was this other kid, and we had heard about Jaali, but he told me we’re going to want her, too, so that’s when we really started going after her.”
Ballenger committed to the Bluejays during her sophomore year of high school.
Winters took a little longer.
She went back and forth on whether or not she wanted to join her high school and club teammate at Creighton. Fortunately for the Bluejays there was already an established history between her family and Creighton University as her uncle, Adam Reid, was a member of the men’s basketball team from 1993 until 1997.
“That was kind of an in,” Booth said. “Her grandfather called me a couple times even before I had really seen Jaali, and said, ‘Hey, I’m not sure if Jaali is really interested in Creighton, but we sure like Creighton.’ That gave us the heads up, because you always wonder what is going to be the niche that gets a kid. … A lot of times it is academics, but in Jaali’s case it was academics along with family.”
With her family on board, Jaali eventually fell in love with Creighton, choosing to join the Bluejays over Iowa State, TCU, and also Iowa, where her father, James, was a Second Team All-Big Ten selection in 1994 after leading the Hawkeyes in scoring and blocked shots.
“A lot of the other schools I visited were a lot bigger, a lot less personalized to the athletes as people,” Winters said. “I really liked the fact that Creighton was a lot smaller and more individualized towards us as people.”
Ankeny Bulldogs
Though Winters and Ballenger refer to Ankeny, Iowa — and it’s population of 54,598 that make up the 11th-largest city in the state of Iowa — as a “small town” because of the relationships they built there, they are not the first athletes from the city to put on a Creighton uniform.
Notable Ankeny natives that became Bluejays include Creighton Athletics Hall of Fame inductees Mary Yori, Connie Yori, and Ryan Sears.
Mary, a standout softball player, led Creighton to its first Women’s College World Series appearance back in 1982. Her younger sister, Connie, is currently the women’s basketball head coach at Nebraska after holding the same position at Creighton from 1992-2002. As a player, Connie is one of two women’s basketball players at Creighton to have their jersey retired after she posted the highest career scoring average in school history (20.3 points per game) during her playing days. Both Mary and Connie were inducted into the Creighton Hall of Fame in 1992.
The third Bluejay Hall of Famer from Ankeny is former men’s basketball point guard Sears. A 2010 Hall of Fame inductee, he led Creighton to three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances as a sophomore, junior, and senior, and finished his career as Creighton’s all-time leader in assists and steals.
Winters actually wears the same number “5” jersey that Sears wore during his career, but considering she was not even four months old when he made his Creighton debut she understandably has never heard of him. Her selection of jersey number was just a matter of choosing what was available.
“I honestly chose it at random,” she said of the coincidence. “I knew I wanted a different number than high school, just to symbolize a new beginning, and that was it. [Creighton assistant coach Angie Oxley Behrens] emailed us and she knew I wore No. 23 in club, so she asked if I wanted that and I said no, then I looked through the Creighton roster, saw what numbers were open, and I said, ‘five sounds good.'”
High School Success
Like the aforementioned Creighton Hall of Famers from Ankeny, Ballenger and Winters are both winners.
As a 6-foot-1 middle blocker and outside hitter, Ballenger is a three-time First Team All-State selection in Iowa, a 2014-15 Under Armour and AVCA Honorable Mention All-American, a 2014 18-Under USA Volleyball Junior National Champion and Most Valuable Player with the Central Iowa Select, and Ankeny High School’s all-time career leader in kills (1,491), blocks (314), and aces (197).
As a 6-foot-2 outside hitter, Winters is a 2014-15 Under Armour Third Team All-American, a 2014 17-Under USA Volleyball Junior National Champion and Most Valuable Player with the All-Iowa Attack, and Most Valuable Player and state champion for Ankeny Centennial High School as a senior.
Neither of them expect that team success enjoyed by their predecessors to stop any time soon, either.
“I’d love to continue that tradition,” Winters said. “I think a lot of Ankeny people are successful at any level because of our town, and how important sports are to us. To continue it here would be really great. When I’m a senior I’d love to see us up there with all of the big teams. I think we’ll be a top 25 team this year, and I’d love to just continue that and do whatever coach wants us to do to become the best team we can be.”
For Ballenger, she wants to do the same as Mary Yori, Connie Yori, and Ryan Sears before her, and that’s leave Creighton in a better place than where she found out.
“I think a big goal right now is to make the Sweet 16,” she said. “That’s somewhere Creighton has never been. Just keep making the NCAA Tournament and just work our way up; Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and hopefully champions at the end. Those are all really big goals of us as individuals and the entire program as a whole. We really want to get to that level.”
That attitude is one of the main things Kirsten Bernthal Booth has valued over the years when looking for the players she wants to coach at Creighton. When looking for players who are used to winning you find people that help you build a program, because they are never satisfied. People like Ballenger and Winters look forward to a challenge.
“They’ll have moments that they struggle, but so do seniors,” Booth said. “I can tell you this, if they are on the court, people will target them. There’s no question, particularly if either of them are passing. If you have freshman behind your name it’s a big target on your forehead that teams are going to come after you in serve/receive.
“The players that have played high level club and have done a lot of winning in their high school tenure transition a little bit easier, and both of these players have done that … their teams were two of the top teams in the state. Both of them were MVP of their club teams last year. I think both of them have done a lot of winning, they expect to win.”
