July 5, 2012
SEATTLE - Along with Courtney Thompson and Tamari Miyashiro, a third member of Washington's 2006 Final Four volleyball team will be making her Olympic debut this summer. Janine Sandell, who played her senior season with the Dawgs in 2006, was recently named to the 12-player roster for the host Great Britain team, which is competing in the Olympics for the first time. Sandell came to Washington in 2006 with one year remaining, after being named Big West Conference Player of the Year the previous season at UC Santa Barbara. She played in 109 of a possible 118 sets that year, ranking fifth on the team with 233 kills and third with 115 total blocks. Thompson was in her senior season as Washington's setter, and Miyashiro was a redshirt freshman playing her first full season as the starting libero. Since leaving Washignton, Sandell has enjoyed a great professional career playing primarily in Spain, most recently with Menorca Valeriano. And she began to compete for the British National Team as well. Sandell was born and raised in London until the age of 11. Twelve nations will compete in the women's event. The entrants are divided into two pools of six, who will compete in a round-robin format. The top four nations from each group progress to the quarter-final, where the competition becomes straight knock-out. The losers of the two semi-finals play off for bronze, while the winners contest the gold-medal fixture. The British women's team has been grouped alongside Russia, Algeria, Italy, Dominican Republic and Japan, so the USA and Great Britain would need to make the knock-out rounds for the former Huskies to face off. |
