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the U.S. Collegiate National Team and compete at
the USA Volleyball Girls' Junior National Champion-
ships in Minneapolis.
In July, Taylor Morey will travel and compete with
the U.S. Collegiate National Team on its European
tour of Slovenia and Croatia. She was one of 12 play-
ers selected.
Carlini, meanwhile, will live out her "dream" by
training in May and June with the U.S. National
Team in Anaheim, Calif. She's the first active Wis-
consin volleyball player to be so recognized.
"It's so crazy," enthused the 19-year-old Carlini.
"It's all I've ever wanted to do in my life is be on the
national team and play in the Olympics one day.
"The fact that it's all starting to come true so early
in my college career … I'm five weeks until the end
of my freshman year and I can't even explain it."
Citing her teammates, Thompson and Morey, she
said, "We're all going to have to raise our level of
play over the summer and it's only going to help us
when we come back to Madison."
Sheffield sees their participation as a win-win-
win.
"Lauren is going to be playing with the best play-
ers in the world on a team that won a silver medal
(in 2012)," he said, "and she's going to be in the gym
with them every day for six weeks. That's great.
"Hopefully, when you're playing at that speed, the
game will slow down a little bit for her when she
comes back here and her confidence should be in-
credible.
"I saw what it did last year with Courtney (Thom-
as), Ellen (Chapman) and Annemarie (Hickey) and
the confidence that they got with the A2 team (last
June and July)."
They all became better players, which is always
the moral of the story for Sheffield.
"You just find ways to get better," he will say then,
now and forever.
"When you talk to somebody, face to
face, and you say, 'Everything you want,
you can experience here at Wisconsin' –
it's not a pipe dream anymore," Sheffield
said. "It's something tangible."
In July, Taylor Morey will travel and compete with the
U.S. Collegiate National Team on its European tour of
Slovenia and Croatia.
WALT
MIDDLETON
DAVID
STLUKA
