Volleyball | The First Spring

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Spring isn’t the show in college volleyball. Spring is rehearsal season for fall’s curtain raising, complete with dress rehearsals in as many as four exhibition matches. Spring isn’t supposed to be the destination. But darned if Nashville’s Brentwood High School didn’t feel like the place to be to Kati Berezowitz on the evening of March 21.

Berezowitz was supposed to be in high school gyms this spring. But not this high school gym, as Vanderbilt took the court in any sort of varsity match for the first time since 1980. A midyear enrollee from Wisconsin who completed high school in December, she spent the fall playing against rivals with names like Wetosha Central. In Brentwood’s full-to-capacity gym, the rival on the other side of the net was the University of Tennessee.

“It was honestly nothing like what I was expecting,” Berezowitz marveled some weeks later. “I was expecting maybe a half full gym—I don’t even know what I was expecting. All I know is it wasn’t that. There were so many people. The energy was amazing. The support we’ve seen around being the first team to bring volleyball back is crazy.”

Berezowitz is the youngest of three Division I volleyball-playing sisters, along with former Kentucky national champion Maddie and current Wildcat Molly. She’s also the smallest of the sisters—and most anyone else on a Division I court. Being tall isn’t a requirement for a libero/defensive specialist. Still, at 5-foot-3, she’s used to the looks that greet her when she and teammates enter a room or she wears her Vandy Volleyball gear around town. The looks that suggests someone is wondering if she’s a player or manager.

It’s tempting to define Berezowitz in comparison to others, by the sisters she has or the height she doesn’t. She’s more interested in establishing who she is and discovering what she can be. It’s why she gladly traded her senior prom for a freshman college writing seminar. And it’s why she welcomed the nervous energy, even the stage fright, bubbling up in the moments before the exhibition against the Lady Vols. She isn’t yet a starter, let alone a star. But at Vanderbilt, she isn’t following in anyone’s footsteps. With her teammates, she gets to define a program and set the standard against which others will be compared.

For Berezowitz and more than a dozen women like her, Vanderbilt was the place to be this spring. And there was no chance she was going to miss it.

“I was happy that I was still able to be the player I know how to be—I didn’t change who I am. I think the best things I bring to the court are my communication and my ability to lead. Not losing that when I got to college was a big thing for me.”

Kati Berezowitz

Shaped by a Volleyball Family

Somewhere in her family’s Burlington, Wisconsin home, there are photos of Berezowitz, not much more than 10 years old and probably stretching to reach 4 feet, standing next to Anders Nelson, still very much 6-foot-9. There is some history here.

Long before he was Vanderbilt’s head coach, Nelson encountered a family’s passion for volleyball. Some years ago, when he was still a Kentucky assistant coach, Berezowitz’s grandparents approached him in an airport. He does stand out in such settings. After reminiscing about their shared Wisconsin roots, they confided that their granddaughter Maddie wanted to play for the Wildcats. It was hardly the first time someone lobbied him on behalf of a family member. Most efforts came to nothing. But Maddie Berezowitz proved persistent, a decorated high school player who always seemed at the hub of teams that maximized their potential—winning two state titles and reaching three finals.

Maddie became an integral part of the culture at Kentucky, even without playing extensively for much of her time in Lexington. She won the NCAA Elite 90 Award for volleyball, recognizing academic achievement among student-athletes competing at the top level. She co-hosted a popular podcast with then-teammate and current Vanderbilt assistant coach Azhani Tealer. And sure enough, she was part of another championship.

“The whole family understands what it means to be on a team,” Nelson said. “Probably better than any family I’ve been able to interact with. They understand that hard work is how they get what they want—they have a really clear understanding that is how you get rewards. That’s a very cool thing and just speaks to parents who have done a terrific job.”

Maddie, Molly and Kati argued as regularly as expected of siblings—about who was the best volleyball player or athlete or a hundred other things. Also like many siblings (and including Kati’s older brother Joey, now a college basketball player), they wanted each other to succeed against everyone else. If Kati is these days determined to forge her own path, it’s because she so badly wanted to be like her sisters when she was younger. Trying to keep up with them—and get a word in edgewise—explains why, by her own admission, she’s now the loudest of the bunch. But they also taught her to be strong and selfless.

The age difference meant that was particularly true in the case of Maddie, whose entire collegiate journey played out while Kati was still in middle and high school.

“She was a good example of what it means to be a team player, and that definitely shaped my understanding of the game and college volleyball,” Berezowitz said. “Not everybody is going to be the star. Not everybody can be the star. But everybody has a role. For me, coming into Vanderbilt a semester early, it was going to be hard. But I think having her example in the back of my mind was calming.”

But there was also particular appeal to a part of the Vanderbilt opportunity that Nelson stressed with everyone he and his staff recruited—something that no other school could. Rather than being next in line elsewhere, they could be first at Vanderbilt.

Kati was a freshman in high school when Vanderbilt reinstated volleyball as its 17th varsity sport and a sophomore when Nelson was introduced as head coach. Early in the recruiting process, she recalled him saying that as much as he enjoyed coaching Maddie, this wasn’t about continuing a story. This had to be her journey.

“That was really reassuring because I know he’s not going to make me be my sister,” Berezowitz said. “He’s not going to compare me to Maddie because we’re two different people. He sees that, which is something that I really respect about him.”

Getting an Early Start

She liked everything about Vanderbilt. She connected with the coaching staff Nelson assembled, first Lauren Plum and Russell Corbelli and then, of course, a very familiar face in Tealer. Looking for a place where she could envision spending four years, volleyball aside, she loved Nashville. She just had one question for Nelson: Could she enroll early?

Midyear enrollment is an increasingly common phenomenon for student-athletes in fall sports who are looking to ease their transition to college. From early in her own high school days, Kati worked with her parents, both educators, as well as Burlington school counselors to work ahead and keep her options open.

When Nelson confirmed it was possible, she scrapped her remaining visits and committed.

In addition to Berezowitz, Kayla Dunlap, Taylor Porter and Maya Witherspoon enrolled at midyear, giving all four valuable time to adjust to college academically and socially and giving the volleyball program the necessary quorum to accelerate growth on the court.

“Our administration was really open and helpful with me wanting to get as much of our team here as possible,” said Nelson, also praising the bridge programming for midyear students put on by the Ingram Center for Student-Athlete Success. “They understood why it was so important for this group, particularly, just knowing that we were going to rely on a lot of young players in a lot of different ways.”

A Spring Unlike Any Other

Berezowitz also played softball into her high school years, but there was never much doubt as to which sport was pastime and which was passion. Both involved teamwork and camaraderie. Both provided the competitive adrenaline of winning and losing. But where softball forced her to wait innings before getting another chance after a bad at-bat or an error in the field, redemption awaited on the next point in volleyball. If you were humble enough to embrace your stumbles, you could see yourself growing from them in real time.

The deserved fuss and fanfare around the opening exhibition notwithstanding, that’s what spring volleyball is all about. It isn’t glamorous. It’s also where Berezowitz was at her most influential for a program doing everything for the first time. For all the information she had gleaned from watching her sisters, and for all the planning she put into enrolling early, college wasn’t a breeze. Still, she set the tone for a group of midyear enrollees who were anything but timid or hesitant to speak up—and not just when things were going well.

The team has weekly “intention” meetings intended to help individuals sharpen their focus on what they want to get out of the days ahead and just generally where they’re at. In one, Nelson opened the floor to discussion, and instead of the usual awkward silence familiar in such settings the world over, Berezowitz jumped in with unflinching self-criticism.

“She was very open and honest about some of her struggles and wanting to learn and grow faster than she was,” Nelson said. “She’ll look back on that and think ‘Well, yeah, everyone goes through that.’ But when you are going through it, you don’t see it like that. She was really transparent and vulnerable with her teammates about those struggles. It’s pretty mature to acknowledge those feelings, but then sharing them is another level.”

Vanderbilt’s first spring was constantly useful and occasionally revelatory. It highlighted how much of a gem the program has in Dunlap, a Nashville native and perhaps the most improved player over the course of her first semester on campus. It showcased Reese Animashaun, an integral part of the program’s original signing class, as a standout who could pass against elite serving opposition and whose skills grew across the board.

Early enrollee and Nashville native Kayla Dunlap earned rave reviews in her first spring (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

But as much as the highlight-reel moments and star turns, Vanderbilt had to find out if the culture seeded over a short period of time had taken root. The Commodores had to show they could learn from the sometimes humbling tests that come with competing for playing time and facing another team across the net, even in matches that don’t count.

They needed to embrace all those things that Berezowitz has always loved about the sport and the rewards it affords those humble enough to learn.

Berezowitz and her teammates sign autographs following Vanderbilt’s spring match against Purdue in Fishers, Ind. (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

By the end of the semester, she started to see the gains for her perseverance, her passing skills and strong platform coming to the fore. Now it’s up to her to continue working on her own before the team reconvenes for a summer trip to Asia.

“I was happy that I was still able to be the player I know how to be—I didn’t change who I am,” Berezowitz said. “I think the best things I bring to the court are my communication and my ability to lead. Not losing that when I got to college was a big thing for me. If anything, I grew because I played with different players, different situations, different roles.”

The Place to Be First

Berezowitz’s past few months were a whirlwind. There was the first day on her own after her parents departed and her first volleyball practice. There was her first college class—English composition. There was the first midterm that didn’t go quite as well as she hoped—and the first final that did. There was also, of course, the first match against Tennessee.

Amid it all, there was also the first night when it all felt like it made sense.

Initially, she tried hard to fit in and be what a college student-athlete was supposed to be. Whatever that was. Mostly, it was exhausting. Then a teammate texted her one evening that a bunch of them were hanging out in one of their rooms. She should come by. They had practice the next morning, but as the hours crept past, no one moved to call it a night.

She could have been at home in Wisconsin, with someone else to do the laundry and an easy senior spring to coast through in school. But it wouldn’t have felt like this.

“I think that that’s when I really started to feel like I belonged,” Berezowitz said. “I started to connect with the girls on a deeper level. Honestly, that was my favorite memory, which is weird because we weren’t even doing anything fun or crazy. We were sitting in a dorm talking, But I think that’s where I became friends with all of them.”

The first official match looms in August. And there will be more firsts for Vanderbilt volleyball in the years to come—the first SEC victory, the first postseason match, maybe even the first national championship somewhere down the road. They will be earned by women who dare to lead the program forward, following in the footsteps of a group who came through the first spring and walked onto that Brentwood court.

“One of the coolest parts of the experience was the little girls wearing Vandy volleyball shirts—I had a lot of girls come up to me after the game asking for pictures,” Berezowitz said. “I never expected it to be like this. It was super, super cool. I’m looking forward to kids in Nashville being able to look up to us and try to play for Vandy volleyball one day. I think it’s really cool that we can pave the way for Nashville volleyball.”

Photos by Alondra Munoz Sandoval, Joe Howell and Pilar Ballough.