Standing at 6 foot 8, senior star volleyball player, Seba Sani, is not your prototypical high school athlete. Starting the game of volleyball at the age of 12, Sani has become a force, striking fear into opponents. However, volleyball has not always been his only sport. Sani had been playing goalkeeper for the high school soccer team up until this past season when he decided to focus just on volleyball.
The main reason for this is his commitment to play volleyball at Long Beach State University. Coming from a long line of volleyball players, Sani will become the third person in his family to play volleyball at the Division I collegiate level next year. His mom, Amy Sani, played volleyball at Duke University before going professional in France. She has coached Seba for years, helping him develop his game since he began. Sani’s brother, Francesco, is currently playing at the University of California, Irvine where he just finished his junior year. Both Long Beach State and UC Irvine are in the Big West conference meaning that the Sani brothers will get to compete against each other at least two times during the season.
“It has been super helpful. My mom is the coach of my club team and she’s helped a ton, my brother is like my inspiration and my dad is always there to help me through my journey. It will be super fun. I can’t wait and hopefully we can have a nice little rivalry,” Sani said.
Sani is not just known across the state of Maryland, but also across the country. He has been playing on the U19 USA boys’ volleyball team for some time. He recently traveled to Guatemala with the team in March to participate in the NORCECA Boys Pan American Cup where the team won the gold medal, dropping only one set in the five games.
“Playing on the team has been super fun. It was an amazing experience and we have world championships in Argentina in the summer and that will be super fun as well,” Sani said.
With all the tournaments and games the USA team plays in, Sani has had to miss a lot of days of school and also a couple high school games including the team’s lone regular season loss to Churchill.
“It’s been tough but manageable as I’ve gotten a lot of help from teachers. Overall it has been a challenge,” Sani said.
Sani’s experience at the international level has allowed him to become a mentor for all the players on the team.
“He has mainly helped with some issues we have had, for example, if a teammate was struggling with something he would give them some tips,” senior middle hitter Guy Saltsman said.
With the volleyball team playing their last game of the season, losing 3-0 to the Wootton Patriots at the county finals, the team will certainly miss the presence of Sani and the six other seniors on the team.
“It’ll definitely be a setback for the team and our performance but throughout the season we’ve played without Seba there and still performed well. However, the rest of the seniors make up most of our team so it’s going to be tough, we just have to grow individually on the off season and come back better than we were this season.,” junior Victor Goerlitz said.
As Sani heads off to Long Beach State, he will certainly continue to terrorize teams at the collegiate level.
