Determined to shine

STAVANGER, Norway --- So what if Ashley Ivy hadn't eaten or napped or even paused to catch her breath after her team's loss on the first day of the World Beach Volleyball Championships.

Ashley Ivy couldn't help herself.

It was time to get back to work.

In her hotel room in Stavanger, Norway, the 28-year-old Texas native started to jot down her observations about the match in a notebook that she carries with her everywhere. 

"It's the first thing I do, even before I shower,'' Ivy said. "I (keep notes) after every match because I keep a book on every team we play. It's just the way I am.''

"I have a master's in chemistry, so I'm very by the numbers,'' she added. "I'm the kind who can look at data and analyze it and extrapolate an answer, and it usually helps in the long run, instead of just playing a guessing game out there.''

After losing their first two matches in pool play, Ivy and teammate Lauren Fendrick showed they still have some learning to do.

They must beat Norway on Tuesday for a chance to advance to single-elimination competition, which begins Wednesday and ends Saturday with medal matches. The top two teams from each of the 12 women's and men's pools advance along with the top eight third-placed teams.

Aside from the Olympics, the world championships are the sport's biggest event. A new women's champion is assured because of the absence of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, who dominated the sport for years and struck Olympic gold twice, including last August in Beijing. So everyone, including Ivy, is now more ambitious.

"I think I'm a really good athlete, but in beach volleyball I feel like a baby,'' said Ivy, a former indoor volleyball standout at Stanford. "I'm trying to play catch up. I learn so much every day. Give me two or three years and I feel like I'll be there.''

No one has ever doubted Ivy's determination.

Even as her temperature climbed to 104 degrees one day in seventh grade, she refused to go home - and risk her perfect attendance mark.

The night before a district basketball game in Arlington, Texas, Ivy was in Las Vegas at a volleyball tournament. After returning home at 3 a.m., she slept a few hours and ended up scoring 13 points and leading her team to another victory.

But her first love was always volleyball, a passion that surfaced at a young age when she and her sister would play on their neighborhood streets. Success came quickly: national tournaments, traveling all-star teams and eventually a scholarship to Stanford, something she'd set her eyes on since eighth grade.

But her world started to crumble when he mother, Debbie, began to suffer from symptoms of a rare autoimmune disease that dramatically weakened her legs and lungs. With her mom in the hospital, Ivy moved in with a friend and debated whether to reject the Stanford scholarship. Instead she arrived in Palo Alto on schedule, and saw action before she ever imagined, filling in for four-time all-American Kerri Walsh as a right-side hitter.

"Kerri probably hadn't been taken out in her four years,'' Ivy said. "But instead of saying, 'Why are you doing this?' she said, 'Go for it Ashley.' She totally embraced it.''

Ivy played in three NCAA Finals. Stanford captured the title in 2001, and Ivy also made the NCAA All-Tournament team that year.

She graduated and received a grant to work on a Ph.D., but after picking up a master's degree in Earth systems and marine chemistry, she decided to move to Austin, Texas, to coach volleyball. On a lark, she started playing beach volleyball.

''There was a little club called Aussie's, and I played it there and I was hooked,'' she said.

So hooked, in fact, that she decided to head back to California. She wasn't so sure how her family would react.

"I thought my family would say, 'Great, you just went to graduate school, you have a full-time job,' '' she said. "I mean I was living a great life.

"But my sister said: 'You have to do this. I'll help you sell your furniture, pack up your car and move. Just do it.' ''

Her sister, Laura, is her biggest fan. She, too, also played volleyball in college at Texas State University.

Ivy found success quickly on the beach, and in 2005, she earned a nomination for AVP Rookie of the Year, a breakthrough that eventually encouraged her to head overseas.

Now her goal is to compete in the 2012 Olympics in London.

Ivy and Fendrick won two FIVB Satellite and Challenger Tour events overseas last summer and then began to focus on Stavanger, an 800-year-old port city that once was a haven for Viking warriors.

"I really love her approach to the game,'' Fendrick said. "She really puts in the time and effort and energy.''

And together, they are learning the ropes at the world championships.

"This is a great learning experience,'' Ivy said. "It's really going to help.'' 

And if nothing else, you can be sure Ivy has taken plenty of good notes for the future.