Rita Cyvas-Kliorys
Rita Cyvas-Kliorys '76 Volleyball
Although she played just two seasons as a member of the Cleveland State volleyball team, Rita Cyvas (now Kliorys) firmly etched her named in university annals as one of the finest athletes to ever grace Woodling Gym's hardwood floor.
As a child, Cyvas developed a love for both sports and music, feeding both passions equally. She was a standout in track and field through grade school, participating in meets sponsored by the Lake Erie Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), Junior Olympics, Northeast Ohio High Schools and the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. She set several records in the Diocese's Championships during those years and won the Lake Erie AAU pentathlon three times.
Interestingly enough, it was her track coach, Algirdas Bielskus, who introduced her to volleyball and her next coach, Rytas Babickas. She joined teams in Cleveland's Lithuanian sports community and began traveling with the Cleveland Lightning team to United States Volleyball Association (USVBAA) tournaments several times a year. Her team won many titles, including USVBA Region IV honors, at one point.
She toured Europe with a Lithuanian all-Star Team, which competed in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands in the summer of '73 and returned to lead CSU to a very successful season that fall. Under Head Coach Marsha Foth (now Nagy), the Vikings finished up 12-3 and Cyvas was named Cleveland
State's Most Outstanding Player for that season.
In the summer of '74, she led the Cleveland Lightning ninth-place finish in the USVBA Nationals, earning USVBA All-American Rookie Team status along the way. She also joined up with the USA East volleyball team that summer.
Upon returning to Cleveland State that autumn, Cyvas really made her mark as she led the Vikings to a 25-6 record and the Midwest Regional Volleyball Tournament Championship, which they won on the campus of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. The mark still stands as the best in Viking volleyball history. Cyvas was voted the Best Woman Player in Region IV, which included schools from Ohio, Indian, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Winning the regional tournament gave the Vikes a berth in the AIAW Tournament, held in Portland, Oregon. The Green and White faced off with the likes of Hawaii, California, and Texas in the tournament and wrapped up the season ranked among the top 24 teams in the nation. Once again Cyvas earned "Most Outstand" accolades. She also was honored with the Athletic Alumni Award that year for her excellence in the classroom and was named CSU's Female Athlete of the Year for 1974-75.
Cyvas suffered an anterior cruciate ligament tear in 1975 that basically ended her CSU career at a time when medicine and reconstructive surgery were unable to return her to the court as it could today.
After having her musical talents share the spotlight with their athletic abilities for so long, Vyvas turner her attentions to the former on a full-time basis after her injury. She had founded and directed the Lithuanian Treble Choir Nerija beginning in 1974 and now had the time to tour throughout the Americas with the group, performing songs which she herself had written during this time. She spent the next decade as the music director of the Cleveland Lithuanian Folk Dance Ensemble Grandinele. She was responsible for arranging and directing an eight -piece orchestra and for conducting concerts throughout the United States and Canada, as well as Rome, Italy, and Vilnius, Lithuania.
Since graduating form Cleveland State summa cum laude with a degree in music in 1977, she has received many awards for her musical talents. She has twice won the Cultural Awards in Music from the American-Lithuanian Community of the U.S.A. In 1993, she received the Cultural Achievement Award from the Ohio Lithuanian Physicians Association. Upon her last visit to Lithuania in 1998, she was as a jury member for the Lithuanian National choir Competition and while there, she was invited to conduct a 15,000-peron coir in a song which she had composed.
Cyvas taught music at St. Casimir Lithuanian school from 1986-97 and has been the music director at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church since 1982, where she is the organist and director of the 40-voice Exultate Choir. This group has produced two recordings and has sung in Chicago, Detroit, Rochester, Toronto, and Tome. She is also co-president of the Repertoire Committee of the Lithuanian Society of Music and was integral in this group's formation.
Although music is her life's main focus, she still remains active on area volleyball and track & field teams. A music teacher at Roxboro Junior High, she coaches the volleyball squad as well as her children's teams.
Cyvas married Vytas Kliorys in 1978 and the couple has two children.
