For some college athletes, it takes months, even years, to earn the respect of your coach, and a position on the court. Senior setter Kahley Patrick, however, was a show stopper from the first time she stepped on to the court as a freshman.
“Her freshman year, first game of the season, we were like ‘wow,’” head coach Chris Catanach said. “She set her hitters so well, they were really confident and we played an unbelievable match.
I don’t think she played her best match then, but right then and there we knew we had something good.”
Playing on the team as early as her freshman year has given Patrick an obvious advantage over her younger teammates: experience.
As a setter, she uses this, and the skill she has gained from it, to help her lead the team through every play of the game.
“I kind of ‘quarterback’ plays,” Patrick said. “I call all the plays, so when we’re in serve receive, I tell each hitter what to hit and tell the liberos so they know who’s hitting. And then I try to put them in good situations.”
Aside from her skill and athleticism during games and practices, Patrick brings something else to her team that is crucial to their success. Her stable and confident attitude is something that her teammates look to her. During tight games, it helps them calm down and stay consistent.
“She has a great personality to play with,” Catanach said. “She’s not a great encourager, doesn’t have to be, but kids enjoy playing with her. That’s not a personality trait, but that’s a rare thing. She makes the decisions with the ball, but the team looks to her to be very stable and not freaked out if we’re not playing well. She’s someone that stabilizes and gives everybody around her confidence, ‘I’ve got my job, just go do yours.’”
With the obvious goal of the season being to win the national championships, this year Patrick and her teammates are first looking to dominate a team that they have lost to for six years in a row.
They believe that this year, they have the leadership and mental preparedness to finally be victorious.
“Concordia is just that one team that I feel once we figure out how to beat them, we can beat anyone,” Patrick said.
“It’s really just a mental block that we just need to overcome. I just feel like working together and beating them once just to prove it to everyone else and to ourselves that we can beat them, will bring us closer as a team.”
In challenging, tight games against strong teams like Concordia, the team looks to Patrick to lighten the mood and keep everyone relaxed, while still being competitive. It is important to her and her teammates that they can collect themselves, even in close matches.
“Last year when we played West Florida, Kahley’s thing was, after every single point, she would turn around and say ‘Bye West Florida! Bye!,’” junior right side hitter Marissa Lisenbee said.
“It was the funniest thing ever. It was a very tight game but everyone played more relaxed because it was so funny.”
With experience, personality, and a drive for success, the team should have little trouble working their way to the national championships behind the leadership of Patrick.
However, they know that they must be prepared to work harder and harder during every match up until that point, and the team looks to Patrick to guide them through it.
“The ultimate goal is to get a ring,” Lisenbee said. “But we have to get better throughout the season. We have a really tough schedule to begin with; just having that tough schedule in the beginning forces Kahley to make good plays, to come up with different scenarios to put us in to score us points. She’s very smart as a setter, she makes good plays and she just runs our team very well.”
Tess Sheets can be reached at tess.sheets@spartans.ut.edu