Butler graduate Kline leaves football, leads Grove City College club volleyball to national title game
GROVE CITY — Daniel Kline enjoyed playing football. He missed playing volleyball more.
After playing both sports in high school, the Butler graduate and Grove City College linebacker decided to leave football midway through his collegiate career and invest his athletic time in playing for GCC’s club volleyball team.
“I like both sports, but I missed volleyball more than I thought I would,” said Kline, a senior accounting major. “I love the constant action of the game and the strong bond on the club team.
“I was doing spring weight lifting for football, then would practice volleyball from 9 to 11 p.m. It got to be too much. I had to pick one or the other.”
Kline joined the Wolverine volleyball club for the spring season his sophomore year. He played libero (defensive specialist) and became club vice president last year. He was elected team captain this season.
Grove City finished 16-2 in winning the Penn-Ohio Volley League (POVL) championship this season, thus advancing to the National Collegiate Volleyball Federation (NCVF) tournament in Phoenix,. Ariz., recently. GCC won three games on the first day of that tourney, defeating St. Thomas (Minn.), RPI (NY) and Missouri State.
Losses to Brockport (NY) and Wisconsin-Lacrosse occurred the following day, dropping GCC into the Silver Bracket division, where it lost the title match to Loyola Maramount. The team finished the season at 19-5.
“The camaraderie made the difference for us,” Kline said. “This was such an enjoyable season. My role expanded more to taking an outside position as opposed to staying at libero. We played some tremendous matches.
“We just played well together. Teamwork is everything in volleyball.”
One of their big matches occurred in the POVL finals against Case Western. Grove City dropped the first set, 25-14, rallied to win the second, then won a back-and-forth third set by an 18-16 margin to win the league title.
Other POVL teams include Cedarville, Cleveland State, Denison, John Carroll, Kent State, Youngstown State, Carnegie Mellon, Gannon, Indiana (Pa.), Robert Morris and Slippery Rock.
Butler volleyball coach Lew Liparulo isn’t surprised Kline returned to the sport in college.
“Not at all,” the coach said. “Daniel was one of the most enthusiastic players I’ve coached here. He was an outstanding libero for us and was one of the most respected guys on the team.”
Kline doesn’t plan on his volleyball career ending with this season. He may play in some recreational leagues and is considering getting into coaching as well.
“I’ve talked to Coach Liparulo about coming back and helping out in some way,” he said. “My job would have to work out with that, of course, but it’s definitely something I’m interested in.”
Liparulo is interested in Kline’s services as well.
“I’ll take any kind of coaching help I can get,” he said. “Daniel would make a great coach. He knows the game and he loves the game. That’s a good combination.”
