On Sunday, we profiled Gia Milana, one of Maryland's best volleyball recruits ever. Now, it's time to meet another one.
Maryland's other Fab 50 recruit in this year's class, Katie Myers, played for coach Max Miller and the powerful Mintonette Sports Club. How powerful is this club? We'll learn more as we go along, but one of Myers' teammates at Mintonette, Hunter Atherton, who was the Ohio High School Player of the Year as an outside hitter and is also listed in the Fab 50, has signed on to play at current national champion Nebraska.
I reached Miller by phone and we talked about Myers.
Miller has served a long tenure as Myers' coach so he knows her fairly well.
"She came to us early in her eighth grade year looking to reach the next level," he said. "She fell in love with the game and wanted to compete at a higher level. She came to our club and played on our top 14 team."
Unlike Milana, Myers was not an immediate standout.
"She had a great frame for her age but early on we questioned her work ethic and maturity. As an eighth grader, she probably cried once a week during the season. Going into her freshman year it was down to maybe once a month and then she got thick skinned and began to deal with getting pushed and working hard as a sophomore. Last year is really when she came into her own late in the season on our 17 team," Miller said. Her attitude basically became just ‘give me the ball and get out of my way. Seeing her grow from an eighth grade kid crying every week to someone who's basically telling me get out of my way and let me get it done was an interesting transformation.
"This year, she was one of the top two kids in our gym in terms of work ethic, focus and competing in practice and we've got three other kids going into the Big Ten. We just graduated another one to Ohio State who started this past fall for them (setter Taylor Hughes). So she's got other great athletes and kids that are going to great schools around her and she stuck out like a sore thumb."
As she works her way into Maryland's lineup, Myers is likely to be a three rotation player but she gained some experience this past season playing all six rotations for Mintonette. "She became a six rotation player this year out of necessity for more offense," Miller said. "Our 18 team lost a setter to early graduation to Nebraska and we lost a 6'3" outside hitter to early graduation who went to Bowling Green University. So we gave her the opportunity to play six rotations and it definitely helped us have the athletes on the court that we needed to be successful."
While Myers may not have developed her talent as early as her future teammate Milana, Miller told me about one trait the two share: fearlessness. "There's no question she wants the ball every time. And she feels like regardless of the set she gets, she's going to better the ball and most likely score the point. It doesn't matter whether the score is two all or 23 all. And she's got a great short term memory. If she misses a shot, she wants the next ball."
According to Miller, Myers is nearly as focused off the court as she is on it.
"She might step up a level in intensity on the court but she is who she is on and off the court. She's got a dry sense of humor but there's not a lot of messing around. At the same time, there's definitely a great relationship there that's genuine with her teammates and her coaches. A perfect example is as a 16, when she started developing the competitive fire that she now has, we were playing Munciana [a top Indiana club team] and they were yelling out at her about her being our money player. She kinda took offense at that because we had another kid in the front row who was pretty good so she looked across the net and said, ‘We're both money.' It was her way of building up her teammate and telling them ‘you might be able to stop one of us but you won't be able to stop both of us.'"
Apparently, Myers brings the same intensity to practice as well as games. Miller described her like this:
"I wouldn't say this about many other kids but when it comes to practices, she knows what her teammates can do and if they're not getting it done, she lets them hear it. She's a little bit more on the side of a Stacey Gordon [a two time B1G Player of the Year and the only four time All-American in the history of Ohio State volleyball] who would go off in practice if her teammates weren't focused and doing the job they're capable of doing."
Although Myers recently had surgery for a knee injury resulting from what Miller called a freak accident in practice that is likely to delay her first appearance for Maryland until the Terps start their B1G season.
"She's extremely excited. She came along a little late in maturity in regards to work ethic and competitive fire and a lot of big schools saw that kind of after the fact and reached out in passing to me and asked if she was happy. I told them there's no question she's happy and that she's not going anywhere. And these were schools with bigger names, in just as big a conference and with higher RPIs than Maryland. But I think what she sees at Maryland and how she believes in what Steve [Aird] is doing is exciting. She feels that going into her career there that they're going to go away competing for a B1G championship before she's done."
"Katie believes in the vision that Steve has put out in front of the kids there. She's excited to come play with Gia and knows that the two of them along with the other incoming players and the girls that are on the roster now is going to bring a lot excitement and more recruits in the door," Myers' coach said. "Really, she's beyond excited to be a part of it."