Kevin Garnett scoots closer to his computer screen and stares intently at me through Zoom. Then he looks off to the side. Like he's trying to conjure the specific memory his daughter shared with me earlier.
I tell the NBA legend that Kapri told me it was the most important piece of advice he ever gave her. That it's etched in her brain. That it helped shape her volleyball career.
Now he nods. He knows.
"She went to a new club," he says, gesturing. "This is one of the best teams in California, so guess what comes with that? Responsibility, accountability, and the coach has to put you in these dark places where you can grow a second skin, right?"
He picks up his pace.
"She had a bad exchange with the coach," he says. "The coach really laid into her."
"Said some real s--- to her," he says.
He tells me he asked her to repeat what the coach said.
"It had cursing in it."
Then he made her scream it the way her coach did.
"It had rage in it."
He's smiling now.
He's heard it all. He was a teenager when he made it in the NBA, he tells me, and he learned early on how to speak to his coaches and his teammates, how to effectively receive feedback.
"I told her, 'Coaches use their finger. Coaches spit. Coaches get loud. Coaches curse.'"
He pauses. "Excuse what I'm saying," he says to me. His smile is wider.
"I was like, 'F--- how they saying it, Listen to what they saying.'"
He crosses his arms over his chest. Sits back. Nods again.
Twelve days earlier, Kapri Garnett, now a 6-foot-4 freshman opposite hitter at Michigan, says she takes his advice -- "listen to the message, not the delivery," is how she recalls it -- every time she steps onto the volleyball court.
"She said you opened her eyes," I tell him.
Welcome to volleyball
"We're all like, 'Whoa,'" Texas assistant volleyball coach Reily Buechler Canter says.
She's referring to an undeniable trend that Kapri Garnett is part of -- daughters of famous male athletes choosing, and excelling, at volleyball.
It started in earnest more than a decade ago. Maddy Kerr, daughter of nine-time NBA champion Steve Kerr, was a standout at Cal from 2013 to 2016. Khalia Lanier, who dominated at USC from 2016 to 2019 and is the daughter of late basketball Hall of Famer Bob Lanier, plays for the U.S. national team. Willow Johnson, who played at Oregon through 2019 and is the daughter of MLB legend Randy Johnson, plays professionally.
Buechler Canter is the daughter of three-time NBA champion Jud Buechler. She graduated from UCLA in 2018.
The pool was so small and concentrated on the West Coast back then that Reily, who played on the same club team as Maddy and called her dad "Uncle Steve," only remembers one other daughter of a famous athlete during her playing days: her team's setter Ryann Chandler, the daughter of NFL quarterback Chris Chandler.
There has been a steady flow since. Tori Dilfer, daughter of Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer, was a first-team All-America setter as a graduate student at Louisville in 2021. Jermaine O'Neal, a six-time NBA All-Star, carried his daughter, Asjia, around the basketball court and to news conferences after almost every game, and -- as the circle of life would have it -- became a regular in the Texas stands as Asjia led the Longhorns to back-to-back national championships in 2022 and 2023. Harold Miner, a two-time winner of the NBA's dunk contest, used to rent out a gym, lug setting equipment, and spend most evenings hitting balls for his daughter Kami Miner, who went on to star at Stanford and now is a setter for the U.S. national team. Around that same time, Avery Skinner, daughter of longtime NBA player Brian Skinner, led Kentucky to a national championship and paved the way for her sister, Madisen Skinner, to win back-to-back titles at Texas. Carter Booth, daughter of longtime NBA player and executive Calvin Booth, starred at Wisconsin.
But now it has reached flood levels. Alexis Ewing, daughter of Patrick Ewing, is an outside hitter at Penn State. Sidney Duncan, daughter of Tim Duncan, is a middle blocker at Stanford. Noemie Glover, daughter of La'Roi Glover, is an opposite hitter at Arizona State. Kapri Garnett, Ryelle Rondo, Caroline and Ava Jurevicius, Jackie Taylor, Cari Spears, Kennedy Martin. And maybe the best is still to come. Riley Curry, Steph's daughter; Vivian Brady, Tom Brady's daughter; and Zhuri James, you may be able to guess who her dad is, are excelling on the youth levels.
The trend is unmissable in the face of volleyball's explosion in popularity. The 2025 NCAA volleyball tournament was the most watched of all time -- 1.3 billion minutes watched -- across all ESPN platforms. The sport has pulled in record-breaking crowds, including the 92,003 fans in Nebraska who shattered the world record for highest attendance for a women's sporting event. This week, four top NCAA teams will compete in a $1 million showcase called Spikes Under the Lights at AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys. Later this season, on Sept. 6, the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley Field hosts three former national champions. Twelve years ago, for the first time, more girls played high school volleyball (432,176) than basketball (429,504). As of 2025, that margin had widened by 136,559, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
"It's the ultimate sport," says Rajon Rondo, who won two NBA titles, including one alongside Kevin Garnett, in his 16-year career. He says he loves it even more than basketball. So much so that he's incorporating bits of wisdom he has picked up on the volleyball court into coaching his son's AAU basketball team.
"The game should be big because the game is phenomenal," says Marcus Spears, a 2005 first-round NFL draft pick who starred at defensive end for the Cowboys and Ravens. "And people that come to see it in person always leave, like, 'Man, I did not know that it was this much fun to watch a volleyball game.' My blood is out there playing and I got a younger daughter that's coming up in it too."
Sure, there are daughters of former pro players excelling in other sports -- Dennis Rodman's daughter, Trinity Rodman, is a star for the U.S. soccer team, and Shaq's daughter, Me'Arah O'Neal, just transferred from Florida to Kentucky basketball. But other sports see a trickle, not a tornado. Nine out of the past 10 national championship volleyball teams featured at least one player who called a former NFL or NBA player dad.
It's tempting to chalk it up to genes. But the dads and daughters say it's way more than that.
Not in their father's shadows
The first time Kapri Garnett played volleyball, which was also the first time she jumped into the air and hammered a ball to the floor, her father stood by the sideline smiling.
He recognized the energy emanating from his 12-year-old child's soul. It was the same energy that vibrated through his body when he first played basketball, all those decades ago, in South Carolina. She would come home after a practice at her Los Angeles club and spend hours trying to block him, faking out her mom and slapping a ball against a wall.
When Kevin first found basketball, he went home and dunked on his mom. His fingerprints were all over his walls and it drove his mom nuts. She made him paint over them regularly. All of which is to say, he knows passion when he sees it.
"I sat back and told her mom, I said, 'This is her right here. She's going to be great in this,'" Kevin says.
Kevin decided to fuel Kapri's love of volleyball with his own curiosity. They began experiencing the high of learning a new sport together.
"We were like two kids talking like, 'Oh, for real? Yeah?'" Kevin says.
Kapri thanked the universe for bringing volleyball into her life. Because there was no way she would have played basketball. She had no interest in being her dad's pupil. She loved his intensity, but as a coach? No chance.
Carter Booth put it succinctly: "They tried to get me to play basketball, but I didn't want to live with my coach," she says.
Stanford sociologist David B. Grusky says there's a documented reason for Kapri's and Carter's feelings. It's called "micro rebellion." He says kids of accomplished parents often actively choose not to follow directly in the footsteps of their parents. But they are drawn to the same general pathway.
Similarly, Ryelle Rondo knew one thing for certain while watching her dad's sustained NBA career.
She hated basketball.
For 14 years of her life, Ryelle sat in the stands -- sometimes with her brother, Pierre -- wringing her fingers and praying that her dad's team would win. This is so stressful, she thought. When Rajon made eye contact with her and Pierre -- he could always spot them in a crowd -- she extended her index finger, thumb and pinky and kept her middle fingers curled down. "I love you," she signed. They'd learned it together to communicate when her dad was on the court.
It eased Rajon's stress and made him smile. In a way, it also eased her anxieties.
When she tried volleyball during PE one day at Kentucky Country Day School in Louisville, she fell in love. She felt like she could be as dainty as a ballerina and as powerful as an earthquake. She felt like she was dancing and levitating all at once. She had dabbled in tennis, but she often felt lonely. (Though Rajon held out hope for a while that she'd be a future "Wimbledon champion.") In volleyball, she was surrounded by a group of girls.
Plus, she figured her dad already knew everything there was to know about basketball -- and he would likely be overly eager to share -- and she wanted to spend her time doing something that they could learn together.
"The two sports are so parallel, and I love them." Rajon says. "I compare them all the time."
It's a game of runs. It's a game of vertical jumps. It's a game of footwork. It's a game of understanding -- and shaping -- team dynamics.
They began watching film together, Rajon peppering Ryelle with questions. Sometimes, Ryelle knew the answers, and sometimes they'd go looking for them together.
"I loved it because now I have to learn something brand new," he says.
Family genes
Marcus Spears was gobsmacked. His daughter, 6-year-old Cari, was visibly torn up. Her eyes were welling with tears.
She'd just lost to her parents -- her mom Aiysha (Smith) Spears is a former WNBA player -- at bowling. It was her first time playing but she had insisted that she didn't need bumpers. She had spent the past half-hour holding these giant bowling balls, taking aim and, with the force of what Marcus can only describe as genetic athleticism, swinging and releasing the ball toward the pins. And knocking a ton of them down.
It wasn't enough for Cari. She wanted to win.
Everything about Cari, who was 99th percentile in height, who had always been 99th percentile in height since the day she was born, reminded Marcus of himself.
"Her build was just like me when I was young. She was super powerful, could jump, explosive, and that's how I was being young," Marcus says. "Her coordination was crazy, her hand-eye coordination and being able to, like, time things up was high level."
Every morning Marcus took a look at Cari and thought, holy cow, this child has grown -- again -- overnight.
Dr. Evan Koch, a population geneticist at Yale School of Medicine, says height is the most direct trait children receive from their mom and dad.
Marcus Spears is 6-foot-4. Aiysha is 6-2. Cari, 6-3, is a perfect average of her parents' height.
When Cari was 8, Aiysha heard about a volleyball rec club in their neighborhood in Dallas and took Cari to it. Cari's eyes were bugging out of her face. Volleyball had everything she wanted: explosiveness, athleticism and teammates. Even back then, she could consistently hit the ball over the net. She loved serving. She floated the ball in the air and jumped and made contact with it. She sometimes stood by the net and kept jumping up and down trying to block balls. She loved spiking.
Kapri Garnett felt a similar pull. When Kevin, who was listed in the NBA at 6-11 (but widely believed to be over 7 feet), saw his daughter sprout up, he sat her down and said, "There's greatness in your blood. Close your eyes. Tap into it."
"In life, you're going to do a million things f---ed up. But it's going to be one or two things that you're going to get right. Let those be your superpowers."
Height (she stands at 6-4) became Kapri's.
"I'm taller than everybody," she says. "OK, I'm going to focus on blocking."
Ryelle had the opposite problem. Her dad was "barely 6-foot-1," and she stopped growing when she hit 5-7, which is small for volleyball. So, even though she began as a six-rotation player for her club team, she decided to focus her energy on becoming a defensive specialist.
She was her father's daughter after all. If she wasn't the tallest player on the court, she sure is going to figure out a way to be the smartest.
The transfer of knowledge
Kennedy Martin was 12 years old and 6 feet tall when her father, Ruvell Martin, took her out for pancakes one morning. She had just started playing volleyball in Fort Mill, South Carolina, but Ruvell, who spent seven years as an NFL wide receiver, didn't like what he saw. She was being tentative, he said. Like she was scared of her opponents.
After gulping down the pancakes, he told Kennedy he wanted to show her something. They drove to a volleyball court and he made her stand at the net. Ruvell, who stood 6-4, positioned himself directly across from her on the other side. He raised his hands and puffed out his chest. He scowled.
"Imagine I'm your opponent," he told her. "How do you feel?"
Kennedy averted her gaze. "I'm scared," she said softly.
"That's how your opponents feel about you," he said.
You're tall.
You're intimidating.
Use it.
Today Kennedy Martin is 6-6, a senior right-side hitter at Penn State and a three-time American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-American. Like Kapri Garnett with her father's coaching advice, Martin remembers her dad's demonstration every time she walks onto a volleyball court.
That's no surprise to Grusky, the Stanford sociologist. He calls it a "hidden curriculum" and describes it as a set of unwritten lessons and values passed on from one generation to the next. In this case, a father takes a lesson he learned from his own sport and finds a way to apply it to his daughter's sport.
Grusky says you see it in a variety of family pursuits, but sports is an example where it works extremely well.
"You can't train your kid on how to be a nuclear physicist," Grusky says (unless you happen to have a particle accelerator in your basement). "You can, however, train your kid on how to be a great athlete."
Alexis Ewing's thank-god-for-my-dad moment came more recently. Last season, during her first preseason at Penn State, she was freaking out. At her club in Washington, D.C., she was the person to beat. She was a 6-foot-4 middle, then a rightside, then an outside. Any position she played, she dominated. But she walked into the Nittany Lions' gym and the weight of the program's history felt like too much. So many players were as tall as her (or sometimes taller). She felt timid. She called her dad, Patrick Ewing, a Knicks legend and 11-time NBA All-Star.
What do I do, Dad?
You're a Ewing.
Act like one.
He asked her to hold her head high. Literally. Walk like she's the best player on the team. Talk like she's the best player on the team. Play like she's the best player on the team. Do that, he said, and she will become the best player on the team.
It was such a simple command. But it brought back a memory.
When she was 10, she remembers watching her dad coach the men's basketball team at Georgetown for the first time. To her, Patrick was a goofball. He loved on her and she could do no wrong. But a different man walked onto the practice court. He looked taller, almost. He had a "don't f--- with me" energy, Alexis says. She doesn't remember what he said to his team, but she remembers the team reacting to his energy.
"I'm a sweet girl, but that's when I knew I could turn it on and off," she says. "I can be mean, aggressive."
For Ryelle, it was when her dad told her about how he differentiated himself from all the up-and-comers vying for his position. "Every year, another 400 to 500 young men are trying to get your job -- it isn't OK just to make it." He told her she needed to chisel her brain. Study every part of the game, study her opponents. Study their every move.
Before most of his games, Ryelle sat with Rajon for hours watching him watch film, watching him take notes, watching him figure out an advantage.
Playing club volleyball in high school, Ryelle began to do the same. She spent hours every week watching film and learning the weaknesses of her opponents.
"I saw how much he prepared, how much he devoted his life to [basketball]," Ryelle says now. "I was able to watch him, admire him and learn from the work he put in to have such a long career."
Deep pockets
Ryelle Rondo loved to play volleyball, but when she was 14 her legs started cramping like crazy. Rajon noticed how much of her daily life centered on volleyball, and he knew he could help. He hired a massage therapist. Two or three sessions a week to ease her cramps. Then he purchased a pair of Normatec boots, which are designed to massage legs and mimic muscle pumps to increase circulation.
"She wanted to do the extra workouts. She wanted a trainer. She wanted access to a gym even earlier," Rajon says.
So, he dished out the cash -- as much as the median salary of a full-time worker in the United States.
Counting trainers, masseuses, hotels and travel, Rajon estimates the bottom line at "$50,000 to $70,000" annually.
"That is definitely not normal," Ryelle says smiling.
Marcus Spears remembers growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and washing cars just to pay for jerseys and travel. Forget about the luxurious extras.
"I grew up at a time where you played your way [out]," Marcus says. "People taking you under their wing and teaching you -- they would have to see something [in you]."
Yes, skill mattered. Potential mattered. But it was also luck. It was timing.
"With our kids, just being former athletes, we understood how much the private work mattered," he says. "So, they had an advantage from their standpoint."
When Cari decided to pour her time and energy into volleyball, and Marcus saw signs of greatness in his daughter, he signed her up for private lessons in Dallas. Two to three times a week. Each session cost $80.
"My parents wouldn't have been able to afford the training that my kids are able to get," Spears says, laughing.
That privilege is not lost on Cari. She remembers going to Baton Rouge to see where and how her dad grew up. She ate crawfish boil with his extended family and talked about how so much of his upbringing was about using sports to make his life better. And, how not a day in her life she's had to worry about that. She's living out her "parents' dream," she says.
"Like my mom would always say, 'Not everybody lives like this,'" Cari says.
Dads become cheerleaders, agents, more
Videos of Marcus Spears hooting and hollering, clapping and punching his fists in the air, and waving his white towel went viral throughout the 2025 NCAA tournament as Texas made a deep postseason run.
That's when he became visible to the world, but he has been Cari's cheerleader from the beginning.
"We were not docile parents," says Marcus, now an ESPN NFL analyst.
He used to stand by the line judge and amp Cari up. He had even learned the sport's intricate details well enough to coach. Swing your arm harder, he'd yell. Keep moving your feet, he'd scream. Even during practice, he injected intensity.
Ruvell did the same with Kennedy. He didn't care about her performance. But he had some nonnegotiables when it came to her effort.
"I'm not going to have you out here on this court if you're not giving full effort," he told her. "I will pull you from the court, and we will go back to the car."
As their daughters became teenagers and their games improved, the fathers' roles morphed. Ruvell became Kennedy's confidante as she moved through the recruiting process. When Kennedy, a late bloomer, didn't hear from a coach, Ruvell told her stories about how he played for a small college and was an undrafted free agent before he was signed by the San Diego Chargers. How he took that opportunity and made something out of it. How that taught him humility.
Marcus? He became Cari's agent as coaches from Stanford, Texas, Nebraska and Wisconsin started milling around her. This was even before she was named the 2024 AVCA high school national player of the year. He was protecting her time, her energy by taking calls and texts so she could focus on volleyball.
A few weeks after her 2025 postseason -- where as a freshman she started in all 30 matches, was named to the AVCA national player of the year watchlist and finished with 358 kills (the second most on the team) -- Cari signed with CAA, the talent agency that boasts clients including Ariana Grande and Shohei Ohtani.
Marcus got a call from his daughter soon after. Cari sounded burned out. She was staring at a bunch of NIL contracts and needed help parsing them.
"I felt like she was trying to do too much at one time," Marcus says.
They spoke for an hour, Marcus checking off things from Cari's list -- NIL-related things, tax-related things -- and then toward the end of the call, when Cari's voice sounded lighter, he paused.
"How are you doing, baby girl?" he said. "I miss you. I love you."
A support system
Standing in front of the net, Asjia O'Neal reaches her arms over her head. It's the 2022 NCAA championship match between Texas and Louisville, and Texas is up 20-18 in the first set. O'Neal leaps. The ball slams into her palms. She's a brick wall. The ball thumps to the ground on Louisville's side. Her opponents just stare at her. The minutelong rally, which featured digs and saves from both sides, ends with an O'Neal block. She punches her fists in the air. The crowd erupts.
Ryelle Rondo was a high school volleyball player watching O'Neal on TV in Louisville. Her mom, watching next to her, points to O'Neal, "You know that's Jermaine O'Neal's daughter, right?"
Ryelle needed no introduction to Jermaine. She'd heard his name enough times growing up.
"Oh my god, really?" Ryelle responded.
O'Neal, Grusky says, is a "role model," showing a generation of daughters of superstar athletes that volleyball is a viable and exciting option.
Then, there's another cultural phenomenon that could explain why so many daughters of pro athletes are playing volleyball, and that's the "peer effect."
The Rondos and the Garnetts are family friends. Kapri calls Ryelle "her sister." Back when Ryelle first began playing volleyball, she begged her mom to call "Uncle Kev" and ask Kapri to find a volleyball club in California and give it a try.
"I was like, 'You need to get her to try, she's going to love it,'" Ryelle remembers saying to her mom. Kapri ended up joining a top club called Sunshine.
When Kapri told Ryelle, she exhaled. "Oh, thank god you're playing."
Now Ryelle, who played at Alabama as a freshman, is playing for South Florida, alongside Samiyah Abdur-Rahim, daughter of another NBA All-Star, Shareef Abdur-Rahim.
"Peer effect is important," the sociologist Grusky says. "Peers, teachers and parents, that's the triad that's going to structure your aspirations."
Especially peers whose journey closely mirrors their own.
Broadly, this collective network and the knowledge that spreads gives these daughters something called the "social capital," to thrive, Grusky says.
"It's not just the parents, it's who they invite to their house for dinner," Grusky says. "It's a community that you're born into of the same occupation."
So why volleyball?
Kennedy Martin remembers standing in the paint -- a lanky and almost 6-foot child who hadn't even reached 10 years old -- at a rec basketball practice and throwing her elbows at the two girls who stood on either side of her, one who was clutching her arm, the other tugging at her gym clothes.
She looked at one of the girls she'd just elbowed in alarm. She was fine, but Martin was not.
"It was aggressive, grueling and not fun," she says. "Even though I wasn't any good, like I wasn't making any shots, but because I was tall I had two girls constantly on me and I was like, 'Get off.' I really needed my personal space."
She discovered her height and jumping ability translated to another sport: Volleyball.
Many of the star athletes' daughters said their desire to avoid contact was a huge factor in choosing volleyball. Thank god for the net between them and their opponents.
"You have to have a certain type of aggression to be in a contact sport and still keep your calm," Kapri Garnett says. "I know for me, at least, I could not do basketball because I was like, 'Why is she bumping into me?' ... I take it too personally."
Some don't even like to be touched. Not even a hair.
"I was talking to a few basketball girls in high school and they were talking about how in practice one of their teammates has a braid, and when she whips it, the wet braid gets on you," Cari Spears says. "That sounds disgusting to me. I am a germophobe. I like that about volleyball: You don't really have to touch anyone other than your teammates when you go in the huddle."
For some, the considerations go beyond germs and contact and into a more controversial realm.
Kevin Garnett says he's grateful Kapri chose volleyball over basketball.
"I'm not dissing women's basketball," he says. "I'm just speaking from a father. Women's volleyball is a lot more feminine. I'm not saying that women's basketball isn't feminine at all, but it doesn't have the femininity that volleyball possesses.
"The girls are still girly, they're still women."
Nodding, he says, "I think that's big in girls' development. ... When you're raising a young woman, it's important [for her] to see all that girly s---."
He goes on. "I love that Kapri is a girly girl. She's into hair. She loves her nails." He laughs. "She loves boys. She's into her friends. She's into events and music. And she's young, unapologetically. And I love that.
"I know how I sound. And I know how this is gonna come off."
To Carter Booth, daughter of the former NBA player, Garnett's perspective comes off as "nauseating."
"Like genuinely, stomach dropped," she says. "You don't have to be 'girly' to be a woman and to be a girl."
Booth, who is 6-foot-7 now and was already 6 feet tall at age 10, says one of the reasons she originally picked volleyball was to avoid being called "she-man," "lesbian" and "gay." Volleyball, she believed as a young girl, would give her a safe space because she would be surrounded by girls who liked boys, she says. Booth, who is gay, now rejects the idea that sexuality can be swayed by the company you keep.
"I tried to forcibly make myself the hyper-pop girly girl, straight girl, and it literally didn't work," she says. "Queerness is not contagious."
Volleyball, with its Spandex shorts, stylish ponytails and happy huddles, has long been perceived as a feminine sport; athletes are often objectified on social media. But Booth points out that plenty of gay and masculine-presenting players excel at it while also acknowledging that the rules promote behavior traditionally considered feminine.
"In volleyball, it's kind of this idea of, 'Take your points humbly and be silent,'" Booth says. "You'll get a yellow card for a stare-down. You'll get a yellow card for cheering in someone's face. You'll get a yellow card for being too loud. You'll get a yellow card for arguing with the ref. Can you imagine if every single time a women's basketball player argued with the ref, they got a strike? There would be literally nobody on the court."
Grusky, the Stanford sociologist, says there is an explanation for Kevin Garnett's desire to nudge his daughter toward volleyball. A father who is an athlete subconsciously tries to search for an "analogous sport that is female typed," to transmit to their daughters, Grusky says.
"The basketball-to-volleyball transition fits neatly into this hypothesis," he says. "Both sports require jumping, both require passing, and dunking is like spiking. It's a case of analogous sports but differently gender-typed."
Alexis Ewing doesn't look back on her basketball days fondly. "I was the center, the biggest person, and I didn't like having to do the charges, fouling people."
But Ewing, who still sometimes plays basketball with her siblings or friends, brings the aggression to volleyball. Her dad wanted that of her.
"I can still be girly," she says, "and still want to kill the person that's across the net from me."
Big names, big growth
Wearing a black hoodie, 11-year-old Zhuri James bounces the volleyball on the court, a sweet smile on her face. She walks over to the service line. She throws the ball in the air and makes contact with it. It zips over the net.
It's League One Volleyball's championship match in Long Beach in April and LeBron James' daughter has been invited to perform the ceremonial serve.
"Zhuri did the first serve at the LOVB Volleyball Championship Game last night! So damn cute and proud of you!! You're truly AMAZING!!!" LeBron posted on his social media with videos of his daughter.
The consensus among the Texas coaching staff is this: The sport -- buoyed by these famous last names -- is reaching a crescendo. Buechler Canter says she's "so jealous" of the daughters of pro athletes experiencing this explosion in 2026. They get to play for leagues in the U.S. after their prolific NCAA careers. She had to turn to coaching to stay close to the sport.
"That's the dream," she says. "If I didn't have a baby right now and it was seven years ago, eight years ago, I would've totally played volleyball."
Texas head coach Jerritt Elliott, who recruited O'Neal and Spears, says this is just the beginning. With famous last names will come more attention, more eyeballs, more conversations about volleyball, more people attending games, more money, more advertising. More of everything, he says.
That means, more famous people, like Serena Williams' husband Alexis Ohanian, Kevin Durant, Amy Schumer, will invest in the sport and "then they start watching these incredible athletes when they start at the junior level," Elliott says. He's seen Ohanian, who is an investor in League One Volleyball, at club tournaments across the country.
"I only see this growing faster and bigger because the money is coming behind it," Elliott says. "It's a wave that's coming real fast, you're starting to see sellouts and people attending the games and more people talking about it, and people are learning what a fast, incredible game."
Two of a kind
During Ryelle Rondo's first semester at Alabama, Rajon Rondo FaceTimed her.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm watching film."
"Can I watch it with you?" he asked.
She flipped the phone so he could see her screen. Rajon watched Ryelle watching film, watched her take notes. She's the smallest on the roster. She needs to outsmart her opponents, she told him.
He asked some questions. Mostly, he just stayed silent taking in the moment.
A few months later, Rajon went to an Alabama practice. Ryelle was already a vocal leader. He saw that she knew exactly what to say to her teammates to get them to see her vision. To get them amped up. In all his playing years, he never really cracked the code to being a people person. Good at basketball, bad at people. Ryelle is already a genius at people, Rajon thinks. He smiles.
Later that year, Rajon sat in the bleachers for Alabama's first-round SEC match against South Carolina, his stomach in knots. Leading one set to zero and trailing in the second set, Ryelle's eyebrows were scrunched. Her shoulders tense. Ryelle looked at her father between points. He signed "I love you" to her. She relaxed. She signed back. "I love you."
Tears trickled down Rajon's cheeks.
Ryelle dug a season-high 16 balls in a four-set win.