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Fourteen-year-old Airdrie volleyball player Brooklyn Orel is ranked 11th in her group as of Aug. 12 in a national contest to be named Youth Athlete of the Year, appear in a 3BRAND advertisement in Sports Illustrated and win $25,000. Photo / Tamara Suther
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Fourteen-year-old Airdrie volleyball player Brooklyn Orel is ranked 11th in her group as of Aug. 12 in a national contest to be named Youth Athlete of the Year, appear in a 3BRAND advertisement in Sports Illustrated and win $25,000. Photo / Tamara Sutherland

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Fourteen-year-old Airdrie volleyball player Brooklyn Orel is ranked 11th in her group as of Aug. 12 in a national contest to be named Youth Athlete of the Year, appear in a 3BRAND advertisement in Sports Illustrated and win $25,000.

The competition is presented in partnership with Sports Illustrated, The V Foundation, 3BRAND and the Why Not You Foundation. Votes can be cast for free or by donation, with proceeds supporting the V Foundation for Cancer Research and the Why Not You Foundation, according to the contest website.

Dozens of athletes from across Airdrie and the surrounding area are taking part. The contest website does not offer a searchable list, so DiscoverAirdrie is profiling local nominees as we become aware of them.

Voting for the top 15 in her group closes at 7 p.m. PDT on Aug. 14.

Orel, an outside hitter who aspires to play libero, said what she enjoys most about the sport is “the teammate aspect of it — how you can make lifelong friends from it. There’s always people you can go to if you need to practice.”

Before stepping on the court for a game or practice, she feels “a bit of both” excitement and nerves. “Sometimes I have bad volleyball days and sometimes I have good volleyball days. It just depends on the day,” she said.

That mindset, she added, feeds into the energy she brings to the court. Orel said she is “usually the loudest person on court” and always supports others. “When they make mistakes, I tell them it’s okay. They’ve got the next one.”

She first got into the sport through her school team. “I heard girls talking about sessions they do, and then I started doing that. Ever since then, I’ve been really into this sport.”

If she tried another sport, she said, it would be baseball because “I have a good throw and my arm strength is really good.”

One of her toughest moments came at Nationals this year while dealing with a lower lung disease. “I had to take medication and inhalers every single game, and I am usually on first and third set, so it was hard to breathe most of the time. I just had to really push through.”

She said her main motivation was her team. “I didn’t want to let my team down by just sitting out, because I know I help the team in ways such as by always hustling.”

Orel has ambitions to go professional. “It is challenging because I use all of my free time — this entire summer, all I’ve been doing is volleyball. I’ve been practicing every single day, and I go to a bunch of camps, like libero training and strength training. I work out a bunch too, at least.”

She said the game is harder than some might think. “Serve receive — everybody’s like, ‘Oh, that’s easy, I could do that my first try.’ But passing is actually really hard. And also always going for the ball — the mental strength to always go for the ball, no matter where it is.”

Orel, who plays outside hitter and is working toward becoming a libero, counts U.S. national team libero Lexi Rodriguez as an inspiration. “Lexi Rodriguez inspires me because I want to become a libero. She’s someone who loves to play volleyball with a smile on her face and she is very good at what she does.”

A moment that stands out to her teammates came at practice when “I split open my chin, and I stayed through the rest of the practice. I ended up getting five stitches from it.”

According to her contest bio, she started club volleyball this year and improved quickly — in January she couldn’t underhand serve over the net, but now she is jump serving and is “the loudest person” on the court.

Her mother, Tamara Sutherland, said she first saw something special in her daughter when Brooklyn started dance at age three. “She was really quick to catch on. She took every move so seriously, and she always wanted to do her best to get things right. Even at the age of three, she was getting little recognition things from her dance school, just little monthly awards. So I think that’s when we figured out there was something there, and we just let her explore what she wanted to do. There was dance, there was soccer, there was all kinds of different stuff, and volleyball has seemed to be where she’s landed.”

“Okay, so I’m hoping I’m going to be able to get through this and not cry,” she said, describing her proudest moments. “She’s taken time to teach a teammate how to dive, and then gone so far as to gift them her extra pair of arm sleeves because they didn’t have any. There was another time where she gifted her backup knee pads to another fellow player in need — she’s still just a down-to-earth, good little human being.”

Behind the scenes, Sutherland said her daughter “has always been smaller for her age. She was 10 weeks early and has been a fighter since day one. She confidently walks onto the court with girls much taller than her, and even for some of these open gym sessions in age brackets that are two higher than her. So she’ll walk onto a court with U16, U17 girls, and she’s going into U15.”

She said Orel “dominated the season as an outside hitter. She spends all of her free time getting in as much practice as she can with solo practices, open gyms, clinics. We actually have a day planner just to keep track of all of her stuff, because it’s so much and so frequent. Brooklyn finished off last season with an award for most improved player, with coach praising how coachable and quick to make corrections she was throughout the season.”

“If she won this contest, I think that would be huge — she is such a saver and a planner that I am sure she would put it towards something, whether it is future education, future training sessions… yeah, I’m not sure,” she said.

The deadline for voting for the top 15 in her group is 7 p.m. PDT (8 p.m. MDT) on Aug. 14.

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