Boyd, Stokes set to lead Aggie volleyball
Fresh off a Friday-morning workout, Utah State Volleyball players Kennedi Boyd and Kylee Stokes hobbled across the parking lot between the Wayne Estes Center and the Spectrum.
Battered and bruised on the knees and elbows, sweat glistening from their foreheads and Gossner’s chocolate milk in hand, the seniors appeared to be in midseason form.
Except it was July 22, over a month before the season began.
But for the 2021 Mountain West regular season champs, all-out effort — even in the preseason — is the expectation.
Coaches and players in the USU Volleyball program admit they don’t have the personnel to overpower every opponent with size and strength. But they’ve found they can gain a competitive advantage by being the most proficient team on the court. Instead of brute force, the team focuses on maximizing effort, keeping the ball in play and utilizing their versatility.
“We always talk about how everyone can hit a ball really hard in college athletics, but not everyone can get the crappy, weird, awkward ball out of the net, and control the ball when you’re way off the court into the right spot,” Boyd said.
“We’re extremely scrappy — we’re able to get good touches on balls, keep balls in play that we would use to hit out,” Stokes said. “So, I think for us, it’s just making sure we play our game and not fall to the other team and start making mistakes.”
The team’s standard of proficiency is developed through repetition and consistency year-round.
“The practices can get frustrating because everything we do is like, the worst parts of volleyball,” Boyd said. “But they’re challenging us to be ready for anything that can be thrown our way.”
Playing what head coach Rob Neilson calls “stupid games,” practices are filled with ball control drills Neilson learned from European coaches who follow similar principles.
The drills highlight a variety of scrappy skills: throwing the ball off the net and trying to scoop it; condensing the court size and scrimmaging three on three to increase touches; learning how to kick, or “pancake,” a ball in diving drills.
The team does these drills, along with others, over and over again.
The “scrappy” mentality was established by Neilson when he was hired in 2020. It’s the way Neilson, who played men’s volleyball at BYU and who has 14 years of coaching experience in the men’s game, has always known how to play.
It’s also a style that runs contrary to how NCAA women’s volleyball has gone in recent years.
The women’s game has become more of a specialized sport, heavily focused on hitting hard and precise blocking. Many players are expected to do just one thing really well and are subbed out of the rotation when they can’t be properly utilized.
“I come from the men’s side, the international side, where we don’t have a massive amount of substitutions — we need a lot of great volleyball players that can do a lot of different things,” Neilson said. “That’s been kind of my philosophy here: can we get six great volleyball players on the court? And we could probably be a pretty nice volleyball team. And we might not be able to overpower teams, but we can win in kind of these marginal touches.”
Thus far, the philosophy is paying off.
Neilson inherited a team that went 2-28 in 2019. In his first year as coach, the shortened 2020 season, they improved to 5-10. And in 2021, the team overachieved, going 22-9 and splitting a share of the MW title.
“There was something really special about last year — where we had no expectations, right?” Neilson said. “And so we were just able to kind of set our minds to getting better every day, and ‘Where will this take us?’”
Neilson’s adoration of the game shows in his body language. He can hardly sit still when speaking about it. He folds his leg under his thigh in a kid-like manner and leans forward in his chair before answering a question. When he talks about his team specifically, his eyes light up with enthusiasm.
“And the fact that our team — like, even our team will tell you, I was always shocked that we were able to play so consistently, so good, over the course of the season and win a conference championship,” Neilson said. “And our team got better, faster and were more consistent than I could have ever hoped.”
The growth of the team is a reflection of Neilson’s scrappy, all-out strategy, which is played out both on and off the court.
He relates the culture to the school song “The Scotsman.” Similar to USU faithfully loving “the spot where the sagebrush grows,” even though sagebrush is an ugly and prickly bush, his team can grow to love the effort and process, even if it isn’t always pleasant.
Boyd and Stokes understand this mindset on a personal level. Both players transferred to Utah State — Boyd from Arizona State, and Stokes from South Carolina — and both have suffered injuries during their volleyball tenure.
Boyd, a Lone Peak High School alum, sustained two concussions while at Arizona State before transferring to Utah State. She was a major asset for the Aggies as a junior, starting the first 20 games and averaging 2.10 kills per set. But she sustained her third concussion during the year and missed the final 11 games of the season.
At the time, Boyd didn’t want to acknowledge her injured position. But she stayed fully supportive of the team throughout the healing process.
After two seasons at South Carolina, Stokes transferred to USU and became the starting opposite side hitter. She finished the season second in both kills (268) and blocks (92), all while battling injuries of her own.
“Kylee’s faced a lot of injuries, too,” Boyd said. “She’s played through them. I couldn’t play through mine. But she’s been going through probably just as much as I did.”
Battle-tested and entering their senior seasons, both players have become leaders for the team and are prepared to leave it all on the court.
Neilson is pleased with the hard work of his players.
“They’re making a lot of sacrifices to be great and to pursue greatness,” Neilson said. “And so it’s a thrill. It’s an honor to get to work with these guys and to watch that process take shape.”
“We’re all constantly holding each other accountable, pushing each other,” Stokes said. “Because I think we all know what we want to achieve this upcoming year.”
The goal in 2022 is to build upon last year’s regular season championship by winning the conference tournament and making the NCAA Tournament.
The team has the talent to do it. They return Stokes, Boyd, Tatum Stall and Beatriz Rodrigues, among others, and add five newcomers Neilson expects will contribute: Emilee Turner from Seton Hall, Jordi Holdaway from Boise State, Myrthe Maring from Florida International, Shelby Capllonch from UNLV and Leah Wilton-LaBoy, an incoming first-year student from San Rafael, California.
But leading up to the conference, every moment counts. Running off-season diving drills, playing through pain or having the humility to support their teammates from the sideline, the players have to give it their all.
“I think there’s some power in, you know, do we want to kind of limit ourselves with these expectations? Or just approach each day with this kind of vision and joy and desire to get better to see what happens?” Neilson said. “I’m hoping that we can kind of stay focused on, ‘Let’s improve every day, let’s compete every day and let’s fight every day.’”