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| GARY HIGGINS/The Patriot Ledger |
| Greg Ball, originally from Scituate, is handling public relations and media credentials for the tournament. |
Scituate native comes home
to press the cause of the AVP tour
The Patriot Ledger
QUINCY - By a route he never guessed he’d travel, Greg Ball is home this week on Red Sox-related business.
No, he’s not playing against the Angels. His playing days ended shortly before he graduated from Scituate High School in 1995.
He’s not covering the Sox-Angels series for a California newspaper, either. He’s been out of that business for about a year.
— Greg Ball
But Ball is home this week because the Red Sox have a marketing and promotions arm called Fenway Sports Group, which has brought the AVP Boston Open to Marina Bay. And since Ball works for Brener Zwikel & Associates, the public relations company that promotes the AVP Crocs Tour, it’s only natural that he has been assigned to work this tournament.
“Any time there’s something we handle near Boston, I try to make sure my name’s on the list,” Ball said recently, during another assignment: BZA sent him here to run Media Day for the upcoming PGA Deutsche Bank Championship in Norton. “I love coming back here. It’s nice to be able to see family and friends, be in a familiar place.”
Ball, who attended BC High as a freshman and sophomore, spent his junior and senior years at Scituate High, where he “played football, baseball, ran track. I was never a great athlete, but loved sports and wanted to continue to be involved. When I went to BC (Eagle Class of ‘99), I wasn’t good enough to play sports, and found I really missed it.”
Ball began covering sports - first for the campus paper, then at the Boston Herald, and finally on the West Coast. Minor league baseball was his primary beat; covering the Sox one day was a primary goal.
Working in sports, and working with the Sox, comes pretty close.
“Growing up (which naturally included a stint as a Patriot Ledger carrier), first I wanted to play for the Red Sox, like every kid. I wasn’t good enough to do that, so I wanted to cover them. I got a couple of opportunities to cover games at Fenway, but not on a regular basis,” Ball said.
“So I guess it is a little bit ironic that, while I’m not covering baseball, I have this connection with the Red Sox through Fenway (Sports Group).”
The Sox also connect Ball to the local PGA Tour stop, creating a bit more irony when he’s back on the South Shore.
“If you look at the two events I’m involved in out here - the AVP and the PGA - they couldn’t be more different,” he said.
“At a golf tournament, you’ve got to be pretty quiet. You’ve got to stand still when somebody’s making their shot. Then you go to an AVP tournament, and there’s a live band playing on a stage next to the Media Center - while players are playing. That’s definitely different.”
A final bit or irony: Cookouts and phys. ed. classes were as close to volleyball as Ball ever got before he began promoting AVP Crocs Tour events.
“I played volleyball in gym in high school,” he said. “It was something I hadn’t thought much about, but now that it’s one of our clients, I’ve gotten more involved. I might mess around after a tournament now and then. When everyone’s gone for the day, a bunch of us will go down and fool around on the court.”
Ball, 30, still follows his hometown sports scene from afar. He knows Boston-area fans because he is one, and though he understands where most of the fans’ passion lies these days, he thinks they’ll find room for the new event on the schedule.
“Obviously, the Sox and the Patriots, and now the Celtics with the (Kevin) Garnett trade, are the sports teams in the news here,” he said. “But I think if people come out to experience what a fun atmosphere there is at an AVP event, they’ll really like it. I think we can stick around here.”
Mike Loftus may be reached at mloftus@ledger.com.
North Quincy volleyball coach with college teammate
The Patriot Ledger
North Quincy High School girls volleyball coach Kerry Ginty tries to keep up with her former teammates from her playing days at the University of Connecticut. The Quincy native said she thinks of them as “sisters,” but it’s difficult to see much of one another while spread around the country.
So with the AVP Crocs Tour not just nearby but in her very own city this week, it’s easy to understand her giddiness. It brings her favorite sport played at the highest level and with it former Huskies teammate and tour pro Jenelle Koester, who will be staying with Ginty for the weekend.
“It’s awesome it’s in Quincy, I’m so excited,” Ginty said. “Five minutes and I’m at the AVP Tour. For a person like me, it’s like heaven.”
Ginty said she and Koester, a 6-0 lefty who’s older by two years at 29, were part of a close-knit group at UConn.
“The coach that recruited us had to be recruiting on some kind of personality basis,” she said.
“As soon as you get over the initial shock of the first day of preseason (as a freshman), after that you end up spending so much time with these people that they’re your sisters - you live together.”
The two met up in April when Ginty visited Koester and other former teammates in Los Angeles. But now Koester, who calls her friend by her last name as an older teammate would, is looking to bring LA to her.
“Maybe I can get her out on the beach to play a little 2-on-2,” she said.
Quincy will be nothing new to Koester, though. A native of Beason, Ill., she and other UConn teammates often visited for holidays when traveling was too much of a burden.
“A lot of my teammates have spent holidays at my house,” Ginty said. “So she was very excited to come back to Quincy.”
Switching back to old teammate Stacy Rouwenhorst to try and repeat the performance of one of her best matches, Koester will have extra motivation toward that goal this weekend with Ginty and many of her players in attendance.
Considering the pair finished seventh overall June 14, Koester’s trip back to her home-away-from-home could prove refreshing in more ways than one.
“We split for a few tournaments but our success wasn’t good so we decided to reunite,” she said. “We’ve been training well together so I feel pretty confident.”
Tim Coughlin may be reached at tcoughlin@ledger.com.