When Auburn Riverside senior Brooke Bray was in the eighth grade, she came to a crossroads.

For the past four years she had turned out for both basketball, a sport she started while in elementary school, and volleyball.

“I was playing basketball pretty heavily at the time,” Bray said. “I was balancing both at the same time and trying to figure out which one I was better at.”

“My mom (Connie Bray, who played collegiate volleyball at Seattle University and Eastern Washington University) started coaching a parks and recreation team for me and my friends,” Bray said.

Although she said she wasn’t keen on the idea of specializing in one sport, she realized that her volleyball skills outweighed her basketball ability.

“I did the pros and cons of each and figured I was a little better at volleyball,” she said. “I wanted to get onto a little more competitive club volleyball team, which meant traveling and practicing more.”

Basketball’s loss became volleyball’s gain, especially for the Ravens’ volleyball program.

For the past three years, Bray, now a senior, has been an instrumental part of the Auburn Riverside program, helping to lead the team to the state tournament title game in 2007.

Although the team has yet to begin league play in the South Puget Sound League North this year, the Ravens come into the season No. 8 rank in the Seattle Times 4A volleyball rankings, a number Bray and the Ravens would just as soon forget.

“Personally, and as a team, we don’t look at the rankings,” Bray said. “We don’t like to be noticed, but it’s hard with Riverside because we’re such a successful program. We prefer to think of ourselves as underdogs though.”

This year the team returns five seniors.

“We’re pretty old this year grade wise,” she said, adding that the team still needed to add experience to achieve their goal of making the state tourney.

“We want to make it to state and place in the top five,” she said. “Before all the rankings we wanted to be more of a ball control team and use our offense and hitters to help us more in the front row.”

As a three-year team captain, Bray said a lot of the responsibility for getting the team up for games – and keeping them in the game – rests on her shoulders.

“I’m definitely a vocal leader on this team,” she said. “A lot of the girls need me to be positive and upbeat. They kind of feed off my energy.”

For Bray it’s a responsibility that she welcomes, although sometimes she said the burden can weigh heavily.

“I’ve had this conversation with the juniors that will be replacing us soon,” she said. “I’ve had to talk to them and tell them if I’m not up, or having the best game, they need to step up. They might as well start now, because I’m not going to be here next year. So they’re all working on leading the team.”

Next season, Bray will head off to the University of Montana, in Missoula, where she’ll continue her volleyball playing career.

“It’s sad at times (this year), but I’m definitely ready for next year,” she said. “I’m getting a lot of repetition at things for college because it’s a much faster game at that level.”

When Bray suits up for the University of Montana next season, she’ll have a chance to compete against an old friend, Dominika Kristinikova, a Slovakian exchange student hosted by Bray’s family in 2007 and now playing for Portland State.

“I just went down to Portland to see her this past weekend,” Bray said. “They were playing Montana.”

This season, however, Bray said it’s all about driving the team to the next level, and getting another taste of the playing in the state’s biggest game.

“I would definitely say the state championship match as a sophomore, although we didn’t play that well, was definitely memorable.”