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Versailles graduate Clohe Warvel signs her letter of intent for college
in the fall. Warvel will be attending and playing
basketball at Lourdes
University in Sylvania, OH, a suburb of Toledo. Looking on are coaches
Joe Raterman,
Jacki Stonebraker and Kim Custenborder (back) and Gwen
Warvel (mother) Duane Warvel (father)
Clohe Warvel and her new head
coach, Karen McConnell. CNO photo by George Starks
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Warvel
signs letter of intent
Versailles
standout heading to Lourdes
By
George Starks
VERSAILLES - With a host of Versailles graduates heading off to
college in the fall, Clohe Warvel added her name to the list of Tigers
that will be furthering their education.
After much thought, Warvel will be heading to Lourdes University in
Sylvania, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo, to play on the newly formed
basketball team, under second year head coach, Karen McConnell.
After taking hard looks at Wilmington and Thomas Moore, Warvel made Lourdes her choice.
“I really liked the campus and I got along well with coach McConnell,”
Warvel stated. “I’m really excited about helping the program. You’ve
got to start somewhere and you can only go up from there. I look
forward to a lot of good things.”
With knee injuries plaguing her junior and senior years, Warvel had
very limited playing time. Missing her junior year and all but eight
games her senior year, Warvel feels very fortunate.
“Two knee surgeries later, I’m very excited to play the game of
basketball,” said Warvel. “I was honest with coach McConnell and she
knew my knee was back to good health and I was strong and it would be
no problem. I feel my knee is as good as it was before I got hurt.”
Going to Lourdes is the icing on the cake for Warvel.
“It’s always been a dream for me to play college basketball,” Warvel
said. “Basketball has always been in my family and being allowed to
further that dream means a lot to me.”
As for Versailles coach Jacki Stonebraker, it was a long awaited and happy day.
“Finally, she chose,” said Stonebraker. “This has been a long time
coming for her and I’m ecstatic for her. She is such a great girl. I
think she is going to be able to step right into that program and do
great things for them. She will take a great knowledge of the game with
her and she has a great work ethic. I didn’t get to coach her much
because of the injuries to her knees but I think she learned a lot by
sitting on the bench with us. She will out-work anybody on that team
because her work ethic is second to none.”
Even though Warvel’s playing time was limited, Stonebraker said her guard leaves behind a valuable asset.
“She showed us what a true point guard is,” said Stonebraker. “We
haven’t had a true point guard at Versailles in a long time, and she
has shown us what a true point guard does. She was a leader for our
younger girls. She’s a great role model and a great person. As long as
she stays injury free, I think she will be successful there.”
Going from one of the best programs in Ohio at the D-III level to a
very new program, McConnell is happy with her newest member of the Grey
Wolves.
“I love brining in new people from winning programs,” said McConnell.
“I feel very fortunate to get her. I know she’s had her misfortunes
over the past couple of years, but I think she’s going to help turn
Lourdes University around with her ability to shoot and handle the
basketball and to compete. I feel she’s a winner on the court and off
the court.”
Lourdes is in its infancy when it comes to women’s sports and McConnell will be in only her second year at the helm.
Coming off a six win season from a year ago, McConnell is looking for great things in the future.
“We have a good senior class and this freshman class coming in has got
to blend and contribute right away with them,” McConnell stated. “We
are looking for Clohe to jump right in and make contributions. We know
she can shoot and we want her to use her instincts and not think that
because she’s a freshman, she shouldn’t do things. She’s a basketball
player and we want her to bring that winning mentality. We have a kid
from Archibald, another winning program, coming in and a post player
from a school that made it to the Sweet 16, so we’re bringing in good
talent. We’re an NAIA school and that’s similar to a D-II school. We
had a very competitive team, but we didn’t know how to win. That’s why
we’re bringing in kids from winning programs. They know how to win.
Clohe has played in big games and is part of the reason for the success
here. That doesn’t change after high school and she knows how to win.”
At Versailles, defense means everything and Warvel knows how it’s done on the defensive end.
McConnell knows the importance of that aspect of the game.
“As a coach, I’ve always been very defensively oriented,” said
McConnell. “It’s very frustrating to me that we weren’t a very good
defensive team. We didn’t play a lot of man-to-man and we weren’t able
to. We didn’t have a lot of foot speed or the size to compete. So we
played a lot of matchup zone. We played a lot of 1-3-1 three quarter
court trap and we got pretty good at that. I had to adapt to what I
had. Now, I think we can implement our speed and be able to play a man
defense. We will be able to press because we want to, not because we
need to. We will be able to push the ball on offense. We didn’t have a
lot of depth last year, and we weren’t aggressive on either end of the
floor. I want to be able to start things with defense though.”
Warvel will look to get her degree in early childhood education. She is the daughter of Duane and Gwen Warvel of Versailles.
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