Briefs: Team USA hires UCI’s Weishoff

UC Irvine women’s volleyball coach Paula Weishoff will join the United States women’s national team as an assistant coach, Team USA Coach Hugh McCutcheon announced Tuesday.

Weishoff, who will remain the coach at UCI, joins Team USA on May 1 and will remain in that role through the 2012 Olympic Games.

“She is a wonderful volleyball coach and we expect her knowledge and experience to be invaluable,” McCutcheon said. “We could not have hired a better person for this job.”

Weishoff, a three-time Olympian is considered by some the greatest indoor player this country has ever produced.

“The chance to be able to work with Hugh, Karch [Kiraly], Jamie [Morrison], the rest of the USA Volleyball staff and players is an incredible opportunity,” Weishoff said. “When Hugh came to me and asked if I wanted to come help coach the U.S. women’s national team, I thought ‘Wow, what a privilege.’ It is a chance to maybe go and coach at an Olympics. I have played at the Olympics, but I have not coached at an Olympics.”

Weishoff said she consulted administrators at UCI, before accepting the position.

— From staff reports

Stratton commits to UCCS

Estancia High senior basketball standout Kassie Stratton has signed a national letter of intent to play at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Coach Xavier Castellano said Tuesday night.

Stratton, the Daily Pilot Dream Team Player of the Year last season, averaged 19 points per game in 2009-10, which led the Newport-Mesa area.

Stratton earned first-team All-Orange Coast League honors as she helped the Eagles to a second-place finish in league.

She was also named to the Orange County High School All-Star Girls’ Elite Underclass South team last year.

Stratton has been sidelined with a calf injury during the early part of this season.

The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs competes in NCAA Division II.

— Steve Virgen

Buffs honor Campbell

Kelly Campbell, a former Corona del Mar High girls’ volleyball star who became the most decorated women’s volleyball player at the University of Colorado in the 1990s, was inducted recently into the Buffaloes’ Athletic Hall of Fame.

Campbell, a two-time All-CIF performer and a member of back-to-back CIF state championship teams at CdM from 1992-96, earned first-team All-Big 12 Conference honors all four years as a 6-foot setter in Boulder.

She holds 23 of 27 possible match, season and career assists marks at Colorado and she finished her collegiate career as the NCAA career leader in assists per game (14.45), which now ranks second in NCAA annals. Entering this season, her 6,228 career assists ranked No. 12 in NCAA history.

After graduating with a 3.7 cumulative grade-point average in 2000, she played for the U.S. national team and also led the United States Professional League in assists during its inaugural season with the St. Louis Quest.

— From staff reports