STANFORD, Calif. -- Kathryn Plummer knew soccer wasn't for her when a youth coach moved her to the center of the midfield. All the grade-schooler glimpsed in either direction was a whole lot of running.
Tegan McGrady concluded her future wasn't in volleyball when all she took away from playing it in P.E. was aggravated skin from bumping the ball.
Both are now at Stanford, and neither need walk a mile in the other's shoes to know she chose the best path. Plummer is the reigning player of the year in college volleyball and McGrady is a soccer All-American who already debuted for the U.S. women's national team. Yet when members of their Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority paired off freshmen and sophomores two years ago, big-sister and little-sister style, they deemed Plummer and McGrady enough alike to make a match.
Soon thereafter, McGrady, a year ahead and thus the big sister despite giving up a foot in height, delivered Taco Bell's finest culinary offerings to her little sister as Plummer studied late into the night in the business school library across from Maples Pavilion.
Each has since helped add to the haul of championships at a school that bills itself as the "Home of Champions." They may one day even run into each other at the Olympics. But the bond that still holds, McGrady now a senior and Plummer a junior, was sealed with that bag of the volleyball star's favorite guilty pleasure. In that sense, they got each other from the get-go.
When it comes to two of the best teams in NCAA sports, they aren't the only ones.
No school has won Division I women's soccer and women's volleyball championships in the same year. Stanford is in position to sweep them in the next month. The volleyball team, which has won seven national titles, is ranked No. 2 with a single loss this season. The soccer team, one of five teams that owns multiple national titles, is the unbeaten defending national champion and the No. 1 overall seed heading into the second round of the tournament. As different as the sports are, which is to say as different as the shadows cast by the 6-foot-6 Plummer and 5-foot-6 McGrady, they intertwine at Stanford. They connect through roommates, friends and sorority sisters. And they connect because as much as the programs recruit soccer or volleyball players, they recruit people who seek the pressures of a place like this -- a place where championship banners accumulate and Nobel laureates and Pulitzer winners might not even notice.
"We have an expectation to be great here -- in the classroom and on the court," Plummer said. "So, yeah, there is pressure, but I think we kind of put that on ourselves."
Soccer and volleyball share a season. At Stanford, they also share an identity.
"It's a privilege to have this pressure on us, that we love leaving our legacy and it's something that we actually look for in games," McGrady said. "It's the pressure to do well, and you know that you can take it and you know you can do well with it."
The athletes' shared experience starts from the moment they arrive on campus. Stanford operates on the academic quarter system. When classes began on Sept. 24 this year, volleyball was already 11 games into its season, soccer nine games. The players on both teams arrived nearly two months before other students. So for the entire preseason and a considerable portion of the regular season, they had the campus, if not entirely to themselves, considerably more so than during the rest of the year.
"The benefit is that you have their full attention," soccer coach Paul Ratcliffe said. "You can train them and prepare them and communicate with them during that time period and their focus is on the soccer aspect. You have plenty of time for the team to bond and gel. They get to know each other and have a good time off the field because they have time to relax and enjoy each other's company.
"I think that's a big part of the process. So we're really lucky with the calendar."
When classes begin and all of the dorms open, freshman athletes disperse into the larger student population. They don't room with other athletes as freshmen. But until classes start, the fall athletic teams live together on campus. When McGrady was a freshman, soccer lived on the second floor, the volleyball team one floor below. Older teammates told them to make friends with the volleyball players, that they were good people.
That's when McGrady met Payton Chang, a volleyball player from the Los Angeles area.
"It feels like a little camp when we were 12 years old," Chang said of those first weeks. "It's fun not having school and just getting to hang out ... bonding over how sore or tired we are."
Now seniors, McGrady and Chang have been roommates in campus housing for the past two years. Doing little to dispel Stanford's "Nerd Nation" image, their current house is called Narnia. Elsewhere, soccer's Beattie Goad lives with volleyball's Caitlin Keefe, while soccer co-captain Jordan DiBiasi is Keefe's big sister in the sorority that includes Plummer and McGrady. Volleyball's Tami Alade and soccer's Averie Collins are roommates, as were Collins and volleyball's Courtney Bowen a year ago.
Not all of the bonds formed in those first nights, playing social games like Mafia and Killer Frog or putting together jigsaw puzzles -- yes, puzzles. McGrady and Chang, for instance, got to know each other but became better friends in a sign language class as sophomores.
"I thought that [early intermingling] was really beneficial," Plummer said. "Just to build that relationship because, one, there weren't that many people on campus. And two, there's just this sports community here that is unparalleled. You want to build those connections with people because Stanford student-athletes are going to be successful in whatever they do."
That is a confident perspective. It's also difficult to argue because those who make it as far as that preseason dorm are generally high achievers. McGrady didn't know much about volleyball. Chang hadn't played soccer since she was 10 or 11. But they had plenty in common. Most here do.
Stanford was seventh in the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings of national universities. The Cardinal athletic teams have won 117 NCAA Division I titles, more than any other school -- and also more than the other top 10 schools in the U.S. News and World Report rankings combined (with the caveat that MIT and the University of Chicago field no Division I teams).
There are plenty of universities that excel in both academics and athletics, but there aren't any that can make the case they do so better than Stanford.
Kevin Hambly is in his second year as volleyball coach, tasked with replacing John Dunning, who retired after winning the national championship in 2016 and who reached the national championship match in nearly half of his 16 seasons at the school. Hambly coached a team that reached the final four during his time at Illinois. Academics were stressed, he said, and an average of almost double-digit all-conference academic honors each season lends credence to his claim. But there was still the time he told a player she wasn't practicing, that she would instead study, because he felt she was coasting to an acceptable GPA when she had the potential for more.
"These kids, none of them need me to kick them out of practice to go study," Hambly said. "They're very good at school. What's more enjoyable is hearing their conversations about what they want to do with their future, their life. A kid like Michaela Keefe, I had a conversation with her ... she has no idea what she wants to do, but her options are CIA, lawyer [and so on].
"It's just a different world."
But it's a shared world for the likes of Chang and McGrady, whose respective majors of science, technology and society and communication overlap for many classes. Beyond the pressure of competing for championships, they understand the academic pressure -- balancing those two sides through challenges like road trips and final exams taken in hotel conference rooms. They crave it. Even if just sitting in the same common room in their living quarters, one of them choosing the music as they study, there is a comfort level in that knowledge.
For McGrady and Plummer, a human biology major, there is an understanding of doing all of the above while also training not just for college athletics but professional and international opportunities. At many schools, either would be a unique talent, the jewel of the athletic department. At a school that has been home to the likes of Katie Ledecky, Michelle Wie and Tiger Woods, they have company. McGrady wasn't even the first player on her own team to play for the world champion U.S. women, ceding that distinction to Tierna Davidson.
"We understand what our bodies are going through and how tired we are," Plummer said. "There's not even that much communication between us about that, but we have this general understanding that if we want to be at the top in our sport, it's going to take a lot."
Even the way the programs play reflects the connection points between the athletes. Though far from a soccer aficionado, Hambly marveled at how the Cardinal played when he took his daughter to several games last season. The precision and possession stood out even to his eye. It reminded him, in fact, of what he hoped to do with the volleyball team, expanding the style of play to incorporate concepts more often seen in international play to move opponents around and create spaces to attack. That is possible because of how quickly he found players picked up new ideas -- and because they are some of the most talented athletes in the country.
And indeed, Ratcliffe said he would hope to be true to his philosophy of soccer no matter where he coached. But he also conceded that coaching at Stanford makes that easier.
"The higher-level players you have, the more you can really embrace that style," Ratcliffe said. "I think at Stanford we embrace the top student-athletes, and that really gives me an opportunity to hone my skills as a coach and play at that highest level of creativity and attacking soccer."
The result this fall is that two teams are playing their sports about as well as can be played at the college level.
The soccer team, despite dealing with injuries that have kept stars out for big chunks, has outscored opponents by 45 goals through 20 games. The Cardinal remain the team to beat despite losing Davidson and freshman Sophia Smith, in particular, whose absences would consign other programs to lost seasons. The volleyball team lost an early match to current undefeated No. 1 BYU, but it has dropped just nine sets in its other 24 matches. The Cardinal can put a lineup on the court that includes four All-Americans and no one who hasn't received at least All-American honorable mention.
On a pleasantly warm September day, it didn't feel like a sweatshop for success as the soccer team went through its final practice before a national championship rematch against UCLA. Indeed, a dozen or more bikes haphazardly parked in some shade by a practice field -- pedal power is the preferred mode of transport for most players around campus -- it looked more like a scene from summer camp. Perhaps not unlike the one Chang called to mind from those first few weeks on campus. Those same bikes would soon transport a few players to Maples to watch the volleyball team play UCLA, a match with its own significant stakes. It all felt entirely normal, as if these kind of weeks happen all the time. And in some sense, they do.
"The goal is to win it every year, win the national championship every year," Hambly said. "That's why you come here. And you're equipped to do it. Everyone who is here is here for that reason -- and go to school and do all those other things. But if you're going to play volleyball here, you've got to decide that's what you want."
No wonder those who take on that challenge recognize the same in others. No wonder they find kindred spirits.
When the teams briefly crossed paths in Provo, Utah, earlier this fall, volleyball players left messages of support for the soccer team on a dry-erase board in the locker room that both teams used. Upon departing for another leg of their road trip the next morning, soccer players responded with video messages. When schedules find both teams on campus, you're likely to find members of one team in the stands watching the other.
Soccer wasn't for Plummer. Volleyball wasn't for McGrady. But in those moments, no one better understands what they are watching.
"I know what good soccer looks like, and I kind of understand it," Plummer said. "And our team is really good, so it's fun to be like 'Oh, my gosh, what they just did was so cool.'
"But on the other side of it, you're just there to support your friends."