Taylor Leath was a regular ball girl at Penn State volleyball games, in awe of the storied program and the brilliance of many of its players, including dominant outside hitter Megan Hodge, her all-time fave.
"Someday," the voice inside her head told her, "I wanna play like that."
These days the native of Port Matilda, Pennsylvania, wears a lighter shade of blue than the dark royal color of the Nittany Lions. In a Carolina blue uniform Leath's time has indeed arrived; the redshirt sophomore is the espnW volleyball player of the week after a monster performance on Sunday at Florida State.
Behind a career-high 26 kills from Leath, the Tar Heels (21-3) rallied from an 0-2 deficit on the road against the Seminoles to take over sole possession of first place in the ACC and rise to No. 8 in the American Volleyball Coaches Association poll. The 26 kills were the most by any North Carolina player since 2005, and along with 13 digs, make eight career double-doubles for Leath. Perhaps more impressively, three of those have come in Tar Heels victories over top-10 opponents this season.
"The bigger the opponent, the bigger Taylor plays," North Carolina coach Joe Sagula said.
Leath also became the program's first AVCA Player of the Week for leading the Tar Heels to their first win in Tallahassee since 2008 and first sweep in the series in 16 years.
"We were down 2-0, but our team has been through so much in terms of not being in the best situation so many times. We've come from being down, so I think we've learned to lay it all out," said Leath, who hit .360 in the match. "In the first two sets, it wasn't that we weren't playing that hard. We just weren't playing smart. We just had to settle down."
With FSU up 13-10 in the fifth, Carolina went into its "blue zone" mode, similar to red zone play calling in the NFL. After a timeout, Leath recorded three of the final five points, including consecutive kills, for a 15-13 victory, setting off a raucous celebration.
Even with all the momentum shifts, Leath insists she never doubted the outcome.
"I knew we could make the plays we needed to make," she said. "We were all very connected. You get concerned when things are going wrong and everyone's on their own island and feels isolated. I never had that feeling, so I never worried. We were never really shook up. We held our composure for the whole match."
Leath also played a clean game in Friday's four-set road win over Miami, adding nine kills with just one error to go with eight digs and two aces.
Born in Alabama, Leath was in fourth grade when the family moved to Port Matilda, about 20 minutes from Penn State's campus. Tall for her age, she tried basketball until she settled in the volleyball-crazed area, and thought "Why not?"
Before she knew it, she was good enough to be on a top club team (Synergy), but she also was a regular ball girl, too, for Nittany Lions games, watching national championship teams with a mop in her hands.
"I loved Megan Hodge," she said. "I loved to watch how dominant she was and how she really didn't care, how she went up for swings with confidence in her ability and training. I always wanted to strive to have that when I was older."
As much as Leath loved Penn State games, she didn't see herself a Nittany Lion. The town was small; she wanted to go far. At Penn State, she saw herself filling a spot; as a Tar Heel she's hoping to lead the program to a place it's never been, one of the reasons why the 3-2 victory at Penn State on Aug. 27, North Carolina's first at University Hall, was both surreal and satisfying.
"It was really humbling to play in U-Hall," said Leath, named to the Penn State Classic all-tournament team.
An ACL tear in high school forced Leath to redshirt her first season at North Carolina, and last year she started slowly as a three-rotation player. She's made a huge leap this season, playing all six rotations, using her 6-foot-3 length and physical presence to be a force at the net.
Her worth ethic doesn't escape Sagula, who notices she's often among the stragglers leaving practice.
"A lot of times, as Taylor goes, this team goes, and we've come to rely on that," he said. "She has this innate ability to step up for us in big games; it's almost like you have to put a ranking in front of a team to get her to play like she did [Sunday]."