Ever tried rowing? No. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I have the build for it – tall, strong. But I’ve never tried it.
Rowing practice starts really early. Are you a morning person? [Laughs] No. It’s a struggle for me to get up at 8:30 to go to class.
You have a lot on your plate as a student-athlete who plays two disciplines of volleyball. What’s your advice for others who are managing an overflowing schedule?
You have to make sacrifices. You can’t always do everything that
you want to do. You can’t hang out with your friends every time you want to. My parents have helped me prioritize certain things, like deciding to do something that I’ll have a memory of for the rest of my life – like going to my cousin’s wedding or my brother’s graduation – instead of going to a practice. Those are just things you have to do.
Speaking of your parents, your mother played college basketball (Weber State) and your father played football (Long Beach State). What’s some good advice you’ve gotten from them?
One thing they’ve told me is to be a better person than a volley- ball player, then it will all come together.
You tweeted that you cry a lot, even when you’re watching episodes of “Awkward.” I’m definitely a crier. Whenever I talk in front of people about emotional stuff and about volleyball, I always seem to be crying. And after the [championship] match I cried. I’m a very emotional person.
But you seem even-keeled when you play. That’s something I worked on the last couple of years. I learned to be calm because if you get rattled then it kind of throws off your game. One of the things that [Stanford middle] Inky Ajanaku told us the whole season was to move on to the next point, and that’s one thing I was working on with John [Dunning]. In the first half of the season, I was kind of hanging on to mistakes. I think all of us were. That’s why we weren’t performing as well as we could. And then in the second half of the season we kind of had a shift and it was like, “The past is not going to affect us. Going forward is what matters.”
You’ve said that you love to sing and dance. Do you have a preferred music genre? I like every type. My dancing music is probably pop, but I love to listen to country when I’m driving so I can sing along.
Who’s on your play list? Tim McGraw, Carrie Underwood, Luke Bryan. And for pop I’m
really big into throwback – pretty much all of our freshman class is. We like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce and Fergie – all those fun classics.
The first time you put on a USA jersey, was it a different feeling than when you put on your high school, club or college jersey?
Definitely. You’re representing something bigger than yourself and
I think everyone has to remember that [it’s important] how you act on the court, how you act off the court, how you play, everything. Only a limited number of people get to put on a USA jersey. It’s such an honor.
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