Gaining Experience a Dig at a Time

They’re girls.

They’re freshmen.

They start for the Harvard women’s volleyball team.

And that’s about where the similarities end.

Meet Laura Mays and Kathryn McKinley, the Crimson’s rising stars.

Mays, a setter and right-side hitter from Leawood, Kansas, was a four-sport athlete in high school. Obsessed with basketball, she never thought that volleyball would be her sport.

“I only started playing volleyball because my friends played,” Mays says. “But then my coach said, you need to play volleyball—you can go far, you can get places, this will be helpful.”

McKinley, on the other hand, grew up in San Francisco, California—the sport’s heartland. She started playing club volleyball when she was in sixth grade, and then dedicated herself in high school.

The hard work paid off: San Francisco University High won the state championship her sophomore year and was runner-up the subsequent year. McKinley was a decisive factor, earning all-league honors three times and picking up an all-state nod as a junior.

“I really made myself choose one sport early on,” McKinley says. “I knew I wanted to be great at volleyball, and I knew I needed to commit the time.”

Despite their different backgrounds, the two players found themselves at Harvard’s volleyball camp the summer before their senior year. Both had ties to the university—Mays’ brother is a junior in the college, and McKinley’s father and sister are both graduates—but they never imagined how much time they would be spending together in Cambridge.

Even when the two players’ club teams met in a tournament at Los Angeles, McKinley and Mays never envisioned being teammates.

“We were at the tournament all day, and it took me until late in the afternoon before I worked up the courage to go to talk to her,” Mays says. “It was one of those things were you sort of recognize each other, but you aren’t really sure how to start a conversation.”

Once the Harvard acceptance letters went out, McKinley and Mays exchanged a few emails, but it really wasn’t until they both found their way to Cambridge that they truly got to know each other. Having to deal with the long move away from home, the complexities of first-year life, and the pressures of volleyball, the freshmen bonded through their experiences during the first few weeks of September.

“Preseason is tough no matter what,” McKinley says. “Throw in the mix of being out of your environment—it’s just out of your routine, whether it’s where you get your ice every day after practice or where you go for that one meal that you have 15 minutes for.

“That’s why it was great having other freshmen on the team, because we were able to go through it all together. It was a great bonding experience.”

Some of the biggest adjustments both of the players have had to make concern volleyball, itself—the college game is significantly different from high school level. For starters, the matches are best-out-of-five instead of best-out-of-three.

“The [matches] are so much longer,” Mays says. “You get to the third game, and you’re like, whoa, we’re only halfway through.”

Mays and McKinley have also had to deal with more imposing opponents in a bigger, tougher, college game. While the two freshmen were considered tall in high school—McKinley even spent some time at middle hitter—both, at under six feet, suddenly don’t stand so tall.

“No matter who you play, there’s always bigger, stronger, and taller people,” McKinley says.

Despite the difficulties, Mays and McKinley have found their niches. Having earned starting spots at the beginning of the season, the two freshmen have established themselves as immediate forces.

McKinley is second and fourth on the team in digs per game and kills per game, respectively, and Mays ranks in the top three in per-game assists and aces.

On the road, it’s back to clashing personas: the studious McKinley does her homework on the bus, and Mays engages herself in a different hobby—sleeping.

“Anywhere I am, whatever the time of day, give me ten minutes and I’m out,” she explains.

“She’ll fall asleep curled up on a single chair,” McKinley adds.

And while the differences between the two freshmen extend even as far as their favorite Disney movies—“The Little Mermaid” for Mays, “Beauty and the Beast” for McKinley—neither can imagine a life without volleyball.

“I used to say, basketball, all the way,” Mays says. “But by my junior year [of high school], I was so in love with volleyball.”

“I’ve always loved it,” McKinley adds. “I want to spend all my days doing it.”

—Staff writer Karan Lodha can be reached at klodha@fas.harvard.edu.