MARRERO − Marcy Mobley walked across the volleyball floor at Academy of Our Lady on Wednesday and introduced herself to a guest.

Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

Christi Gongora digs as teammate Melania Castro watches during Academy of Our Lady volleyball practice Wednesday.

Before the guest’s question was even finished, Mobley smiled and rolled her eyes. She knew what she was being asked and, quite frankly, is tired of the query.

“Everywhere you go, ‘What school do you go to?’ ” Mobley said. “AOL. ‘Oh, how’s that going for you?’ ”

It didn’t use to be like that. Mobley went to Immaculata a year ago. And the year before.

But Immaculata is no longer around, having merged with Archbishop Blenk to form Academy of Our Lady. The two schools were sporting rivals. No one knew exactly how the transition would go.

While the campus is at Immaculata, the name is gone. Before you ask, few people are clamoring for everything to go back to the way it was before.

“I was kind of nervous. We were big rivals,” senior Amelia Hendrickson said. “The only difference now is if the names are on the shirts we wear.”

Said Mobley, “I think it was a good thing. Things are working out well.”

Teri Verret, AOL’s head volleyball coach, assistant principal, athletics director and just about everything else, is a graduate of Blenk. Assistant coach Monique Robiskie is a graduate of Immaculata.

In one way or the other, each of the coaching staffs came together. One of the coaches didn’t want to coach anymore, the other changed jobs. One continues to coach, another is an assistant.

“A lot of it was by process of elimination,” Verret said.

Bradley Handwerger / WWL-TV.com

The volleyball team at Academy of Our Lady practices on Wednesday. The former Immaculata and Archibishop Blenk schools combined to form AOL. This is the first year of the new school.

If you think there are problems with combining to former rivals, you’d be wrong, Verret said. In fact, the transition was nearly smooth. Well, not the actual physical transition − having to move computers and equipment and such − but combining the students.

“The difficult part has been getting the combination of two traditions,” Verret said. “The girls are doing fine. Kids are kids. But what colors are the senior sweaters going to be? What did you do for you prom?”

The schools should be used to change by now. After Katrina, Blenk took in nearly 300 students from 21 schools. Immaculata added between 75 and 100.

AOL currently has about 700 students. Not a big deal for Blenk students, who were around 600 or so students at the old high school. But for Immaculata students, the change is drastic. The school is nearly 400 people more than their old student body.

At least Immaculata girls got to stay on their own campus, a complex far more spread out than that of Blenk.

“It was a huge adjustment,” said Hendrickson, who has verbally committed to play volleyball at Southern Mississippi next fall. “The campus is a lot longer. Ours was up and square. Theirs is like a long shotgun house.”

That’s just fine for Robiskie.

“It’s like I never left,” she said. “It’s the same. Different name. But everything else is like I’m back home.”

That won’t last for long, though. The Archdiocese is planning on building a new campus, meaning there will be a new school to go with the new name.

“We’re looking forward to building a new school, a state of the art facility,” Verret said. “That’s what the Archdiocese wants.”

And then, maybe, Mobley will finally be able to stop fielding questions about how the two schools combined.