2024 Volleyball: SEC, here comes Daddy

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First match on Thursday overlaps with WBB versus ND - 6pm on ESPN 

The app is gonna get some work for split screening 

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https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/42737670/ncaa-volleyball-madisen-skinner-texas-longhorns-three-peat

Poor Madi (at times)

MADISEN SKINNER TRUDGES toward an empty table on an Austin sidewalk and plonks her yoga mat on a chair. It's 5:30 p.m. on a toasty October day. She sighs.

Skinner is heading to yoga class on a rare day off for the Texas volleyball team. She's wearing a touch of makeup, but it doesn't hide the bags under her eyes. The two-time defending national champions dropped a five-setter to Texas A&M the night before, the first of what would become a stunning three-game losing streak at home.

"You looked good yesterday," I say to Skinner. "How did you feel?"

"What happened yesterday?" she asks.

"Um, the match?"

"Oh right," she says. She pivots. "I haven't breathed since."

The 23-year-old fifth-year senior got home after midnight, then attended two morning classes and had back-to-back calls with her agents to discuss her professional volleyball options. Then she took Finley, her three-legged dog, for a walk before hopping in her car to meet me for yoga.

She walks over to a hole-in-the-wall juice shop and orders a blueberry smoothie. As she returns to the table, the man at the counter peeks out the shop's door.

"Do you go to UT?" he asks Skinner.

"Yes," she says, sipping her smoothie.

"Do you play volleyball?" he asks.

She nods.

"It's her!" he announces to the other employee inside the shop. A young Black woman runs out.

"You're Madi Skinner," she says.

She flashes a polite smile, then purses her lips and nods.

Being Madi Skinner means you're a Texas volleyball star. It means you're a three-time national champion. It means you can float like a drone and hammer a volleyball to the floor. It means you're revered for doing things that don't give you much joy. It means you're questioning whether volleyball should be a part of a future that has so many other tantalizing options. It means you wish everyone would stop looking to you for answers to why this Texas dynasty is in danger.

For now, mercifully, it means you're off to yoga.

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But also woof, Craig Skinner does not come off well

Quote

At Kentucky, fans, coaches and teammates started looking to Madi Skinner for leadership. She didn't have it in her.

"I was playing so much volleyball I was sick of it," Madi says. "I felt like people only really cared about me as a volleyball player."

Talking to coach Craig Skinner (no relation) about her feelings didn't seem like an option.

"When I was there, he was a coach, nothing more, nothing less," Madi says. "No coffee dates. No chitchats."

She didn't have her piano or her guitar. She stopped dancing. All the little things that gave her joy were gone. At night, she curled into a ball in her bed and cried. She began having panic attacks. She had never felt this way before.

At a practice in early October, trainer Katy Poole could tell something was wrong. She pulled Madi aside and told her she was concerned. Madi started therapy. She continued to show up to volleyball every day, and she felt moments of joy. She clung to those. But one day in the locker room before practice, Poole found Madi in tears. She didn't pry, but she sat with her as tears streamed down Madi's face. Poole and the coaches decided she needed a mental health day and sent her home.

Rebecca remembers picking up Madi outside the arena after a match in late October. Madi got in, closed the door and burst into tears. "Mom, this is a lot," she cried. Rebecca held her hands. "How can we help lessen your load? What can I do to help?" Rebecca asked. Madi had no answers.

A few weeks later, during warmups before a match, Coach Skinner called her aside. She remembers him telling her that she wasn't engaging with her teammates, that she wasn't invested in them, that she was pulling away.

She went to his office a few days later and sobbed.

"You know how down bad I am, how much I'm struggling, and you're not texting me, not checking in on me, and you're expecting so much from me as a volleyball player, and you're expecting me to carry this huge load and to produce for the team and do all of these things," she said, stumbling through her dialogue with him.

She remembers Skinner telling her that he cared about her, but that part of coming to college was growing up and learning how to deal with problems. His words didn't resonate.

Madi continued to go to therapy.

By the time November rolled around, Madi lost the motivation to get out of bed. She was failing her classes. She remembers standing outside the student center one evening and thinking, "I can't do this anymore."

I want this all to end.

Tears streamed down her face as she texted a friend.

"I don't want to live anymore."

"I don't want to be here."

That whole night, every time she felt like she wanted it all to end, a more pressing thought followed:

I couldn't do that to my mom. She would be devastated.

Then came the clearest thought she'd had in a long time.

I need to leave Lexington. I need to leave Kentucky. I need a fresh start.