The Kansas volleyball team was back on the floor for real over the weekend in Durham, North Carolina, where the 13th-ranked Jayhawks swept three matches against South Carolina, Duke and Colgate to open the season at 3-0.
The Duke Tournament meant a lot of things for this program, from the first official step toward another run to the NCAA Tournament to the debut of a few key freshman and the start of the final run for a handful of seniors.
For KU sophomore Molly McCarthy, however, this weekend simply marked her return to action.
Out all of 2023 after redshirting and electing to have hip surgery on her torn right labrum, the 5-foot-11 defensive specialist/libero from Rancho Mirage, California said her time away, and recent return to action, painted her sport in a whole new light.
“It feels good to be back,” McCarthy told R1S1 Sports in a recent interview. “I think it was definitely what was meant to happen, and it just taught me a lot about the sport of volleyball and why I play it. I do it because I love it.”
“When I came back, it was, how can I come back and give it my all and just appreciate it every single day? I think that helped me see the game from a much larger perspective.”
That’s not to say she didn’t compete hard before the injury. She appeared in 63 sets as a freshman and played in some key matches right away. That experience, along with a season off, helped McCarthy enter Year 3 in a whole new place.
“I just have a more clear vision than I did freshman year,” she said before playing a set against Duke in this weekend’s win over the Blue Devils. “I’m a lot more mature in how I approach the game now, whereas back then I was like, energy, energy, energy.”
That’s not to say the all-energy-all-the-time approach is a bad one. It’s just that, as she sat and watched some of KU’s upperclassmen play, she learned a lot from how they carry themselves on the court.
That was particularly true of the players at her position, most notably starters Caroline Bien and Raegan Burns.
“Bean and Raegan, they’re both just very composed, very calm,” McCarthy said. “That’s kind of the way their personalities are. And, me, I’m just a very high-energy, loud, loud, loud person. So, watching them helps me remind myself to kind of bring it back down and it’s very settling.”
McCarthy first got into volleyball in 6th grade at the nudging of her mother, Missy, and as a dig at her father, Kent.
“It was the one sport my dad didn’t push me to do,” she said with a laugh. “It was always football or baseball or basketball or soccer. And I was like, ‘Nope, I’m gonna do a different thing than everyone else.’”
While her involvement with the sport let to love at first serve, it also opened the door for Kent to find joy in the game. In fact, early in her career, McCarthy said there were plenty of times when her dad went and played or practiced with her. He even went as far as to coach one of her teams when she was in seventh grade.
How’d he grade out?
“I mean, he was OK,” McCarthy joked. “He did his best.”
Speaking of jokes, there one on the KU volleyball team that the DS/libero position is known as “the littles and Molly.”
Burns stands 5-foot-4, freshman Heidi Devers is 5-5 and then there’s the two Bryn(n)s, Bryn McGehe at 5-6 and Brynn Kirsch at 5-8. McCarthy is noticeably taller than all of them, the result of picking her position early in her career.
“I didn’t think I was gonna be tall,” she said. “I thought I was gonna top out at like 5-8. So, when I picked my position I was like, ‘A 5-8 hitter in college, that makes no sense,’ and then I ended up being about 5-11.”
That’s not unheard of in today’s game, where players are taller than ever at just about every position on the floor. And Bien, at 6-foot, is a good example of how height and length doesn’t automatically eliminate you from playing in the back row.
If anything, McCarthy said she thinks it helps.
“I think I’ve got a little more range just because of my height,” she said. “Making sure I use it to my advantage is the biggest thing.”
While those extra few inches certainly don’t hurt, it’s the extra knowledge, perspective and understanding of the game she loves that figures to serve her best this season and beyond.
While redshirting in 2023, McCarthy said it was critical for her to stay loud, stay involved and remain a vocal and visible part of the team.
So, rather than sitting behind the bench next to her crutches or with her brace, she made her way onto the bench to help scout, chart and pick up whatever she could that might help her teammates and coaches attack that night’s opponent.
“I was just making sure I was giving as much as I could back to the team,” she said.
One person outside the program who helped her figure out what that looked like was her brother, Charlie, a former member of the KU basketball team.
“I definitely leaned on him a lot because he’s had injuries in the past and he knew what it was like to be injured a lot more than I did,” McCarthy said. “He just had that other perspective about how I could be a team player while not actually playing.”
Now that she’s able to suit up again and get out there with them, McCarthy said it’s those lessons and challenges that remain fresh in her mind that have her counting on her best season yet.
Asked to complete the following sentence, “Molly McCarthy will have a good season in 2024 because _____,” the redshirt-sophomore pointed to her
“Because of my setback,” she said. “I think that just gave me a lot more perspective on myself in the game, and I also think it would just be because of my teammates and coaches and the environment that they create.”
“You’re constantly finding ways to make your game better and in this environment they give you space to do that. And part of that is making mistakes.”
“I know we’ve got a pretty great season ahead of us,” she added. “We’re excited about the preseason ranking but also about just being where our feet are. For me, personally, I’m just excited to be back and trying to give it my all every single day and give my team whatever I can.”
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