Larsen will leave her mark

It started with an innocent question.

The volleyball coach at Canyon High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., asked Haley Larsen the basketball player why she wasn’t playing volleyball, too. Larsen had nearly no volleyball experience, but she decided to try out her sophomore year.

Larsen and the University of Idaho are certainly glad she did. After a rather late introduction to volleyball, all the senior outside hitter has done is become the Vandals’ all-time kills leader and earn three All-Western Athletic Conference designations, with a fourth almost certain to follow this season. Jessica Moore (1996-98), Lynne Hyland (94-96), Nancy Wicks (91-93) and Kelly Gibbons (82-84) were three-time all-conference picks, but no Vandal has earned four.

“My high school coach saw that I was tall and said, ‘Why don’t you play volleyball?’ ” the 5-foot-11 Larsen said. “I had played basketball growing up. I was kind of goofy in the beginning and didn’t know what to do, but I think I just had really good coaches and they invested a lot of time in me.”

By her senior season, she was team captain and drawing modest recruiting interest. Her prep and club coaches kept telling college coaches she was a late bloomer, but they would nod and move on – except for Idaho’s Debbie Buchanan.

“I knew she’d be an impact player,” Buchanan said. “She was playing right side for a top club team when we recruited her, but I could tell she was athletic and dynamic.”

All true, but Larsen’s success involves mind and body.

“I’ve had to be a little smarter,” she said. “I don’t jump as high as all the outside hitters and I’m not 6-5. There are a lot of players like me and a lot that are smaller than me.”

Larsen’s name is all over the Vandals’ record book. She has 81 career matches with double-figure kills, tied for first in UI history. She holds the school record with 36 kills in a match. She’s eighth nationally in kills per set (4.55) this season.

There are no statistics tracking Larsen’s contributions to the Moscow community and beyond, but they are equally impressive. Modeling something her parents had done in California, Larsen organized the team to adopt two families for the holidays, giving presents to eight children.

“I was having a poopy year and I wanted to do something really good,” she said. “The athletic department did it as a whole and I wanted the volleyball team to do it on our own.”

Next month, Larsen will join 13 other students in traveling to Peru to help build a youth center in a rural town. Her inspiration was teammate Kelsey Yonker, who had gone on similar trips through the UI volunteer center.

With the help of her mom, Larsen owns a horse, Gunner, through PMUrescue.org that she said probably would have gone to auction and been slaughtered. She’s in the process of getting a dog, to be named Bella, she wants to train and have certified as a therapy dog.

“I really want to work with kids that have cancer and Down syndrome and the organization TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors), which is a program for survivors who have lost people in the military,” said Larsen, whose older brother died in Iraq when she was in high school. “I was at their convention last Memorial Day.”

She has found time to be a WAC all-academic selection and is on course to earn a degree in advertising. She made the UI’s ad team that will compete against other universities.

And she’s engaged. Her fiancé, Matt, went through Idaho’s ROTC program.

Otherwise, not much going on in her life.

“I’m more about the experience, how it’s changed me as a person and how much better I feel and the friends I’ve made,” she said.

There is one more item of business left on the court. The Vandals are third in the WAC and have hopes of making the NCAA tournament. To do so, they need to finish strong, beginning with home matches against Louisiana Tech on Thursday and No. 7 Hawaii on Saturday.

“The core group I came in with (Sarah Conwell, Kelsey James, Anna McKinney, Debbie Pederson and Yonker), we’ve all stayed and been there for each other,” Larsen said. “That’s really awesome.”

Notes

Eastern Washington (13-10, 8-4 Big Sky) sits in third place but still has matches with first-place Northern Colorado (9-2) Saturday in Cheney and at No. 2 Portland State (9-3) next week. Saturday is the last home match for seniors Chelsea Ross and Mandy Daniels, who is fifth in career digs (1,285) in EWU history. … Washington State, which has dropped 11 straight matches, entertains No. 9 UCLA on Friday and No. 10 USC on Sunday. … The WCC has four teams ranked in the top 25, including San Francisco, which fell to Gonzaga last week. The 25th-ranked Dons (8-1 WCC) and No. 14 San Diego (8-1) battle for first place Saturday.