Editor's note: Madison Keyes and the Golden Eagle volleyball
team head to the OVC Tournament this week in Murray, Ky. It's a
good time to run the story on TTUsports.com about Madison and her
sister, Michaela, that was the cover story on our most recent
edition of unlimited, the official online
magazine of Tennessee Tech Athletics. Click
here to go to the unlimited page.
By Rob Schabert, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports
Information
They claim there isn’t any competition between them, these
two Cincinnati sisters, and that assertion appears authentic during
casual conversations and everyday enterprises.
Yeah, right.
A college volleyball player and a college soccer player, three
years apart and the fruit of the same loving family, their claim is
mostly true. However, a sporting, killer instinct bubbles just
under the surface. One seemingly simple, innocent question
unleashes their scrappiness.
We asked: Which of you plays the better
sport?
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: I do.
SOCCER PLAYER: Are you serious? I do.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Volleyball is the greatest combination of skill
and athleticism.
SOCCER PLAYER: Volleyball? Volleyball?
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Yes. I’m just saying. It uses every part
of your body (holding her arms out to her sides,
limp, to signifying their non-use
in soccer).
SOCCER PLAYER: When you’re getting bumped off the ball you
use your arms. No, soccer is far superior to
volleyball. We play through weather
conditions. We literally run seven to nine miles every day.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: So, we’re smart enough to play inside and
not out in the weather.
SOCCER PLAYER: There is no contact in volleyball. In soccer,
you’re getting slammed off the ball.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: The only thing we agree on is that I would die
if I played her sport, and she would die
if she played my sport. If she
jumped for three hours…
SOCCER PLAYER: I’d play libero! And you’d sit in the
back. You wouldn’t run. You’d be the goalkeeper.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Soccer, anybody can go kick a ball around. In
volleyball, not just anybody can play.
You have to have some skill to keep the
ball in the air.
Got it from dad
Madison Keyes is a senior member of the Tennessee Tech volleyball
team. Her sister Michaella, three years her junior, is a true
freshman member of the Golden Eagle soccer team. They are two of
three daughters born to Wendy and Michael Keyes of Cincinnati.
The third sister, Macey, is attend Sycamore High School where she
is a freshman on the Aviator’s volleyball team.
“She’s actually pretty good,” admits Madison,
who shares the sport with her youngest sister.
Three young women, all competing in sports. Clearly from an
athletic family, right?
Not necessarily.
“Mom played softball in high school,” says
Michaella.
“But it wasn’t anything real serious,” adds
Madison
“We got it mainly from our dad,” says Michaella.
“Mom isn’t really the athletic type. She’s more
like a Barbie Doll. She’s ‘princess-y.’ She
doesn’t want to get dirty or sweaty.”
Mom doesn’t disagree.
“It’s a good description,” says Wendy. “I
didn’t play sports in high school. I didn’t really have
the opportunity to play.”
It was Wendy and Michael who got the girls started in sports,
enrolling them in gymnastics, swimming and other activities at the
YMCA when they were very young. The family has always nurtured a
sports-heavy lifestyle.
“We’re all big sports fans. The Bengals and the Reds.
We like them a lot,” says Madison. “My dad has finished
our basement and set it up like a sports lounge. It’s
awesome, really. We have all kinds of sports-related stuff down
there. There’s a big, neon Bengals sign.”
It’s in the blood
The love of sports isn’t the only trait that was nurtured by
their family. Both are majoring in nursing at Tech, a career path
that is also in the family history. Wendy is a nurse in a
women’s health field, and their maternal grandmother was also
in nursing.
“In the end, I want to be a family nurse practitioner, so
that will take some extra school,” says Madison. “I
think eventually I’ll need my master’s.”
And majoring in nursing is no small task, keeping her away from
volleyball quite often in her senior season.
“The workload is tremendous,” says TTU volleyball coach
Dave Zelenock. “It’s very challenging for her to find
time to eat, sleep, practice , study, and she has had to make
concessions.
“She flat out does not practice at all on Thursdays because
of clinicals and Thursday is a big ‘live day’ for us.
It’s been really tough on her. She has to get it done on
film, and doesn’t have a chance to do some of those things in
practice. She has to ‘think’ it in preparations for our
next opponent,” Zelenock explained.
That heavy workload hasn’t slowed her or caused a
letdown.
“I have never heard her complain,” Zelenock says.
“She accepts that the next couple months will be a real
grind, and then it will get a little better when volleyball is
finished. She wanted to be a nurse, and she also wanted to be a
volleyball player. It was her decision, and she’s making it
work.”
Madison admits that it’s a burden.
“The goal right now is just to get through this semester,
because it’s really kicking my butt,” she says.
“I’ve finally adjusted to everything, but I’m
telling you, at the beginning of the semester I thought I was going
to have a panic attack. “
Having her little sister living with her was a huge plus.
“She did have a panic attack a couple of times,”
Michaella says.
“I would wake up crying, and I was worried that I was late
for class, and Michaella was there. She would say to me,
‘it’s like two in the morning and you’re
fine.’ I always felt like I was trying to catch my breath and
get caught up on everything. I mean it just hit me. Nursing was
crazy.”
In her fourth year on campus, Madison started upper division
nursing courses last semester and this fall is in clinicals, and
she feels like she has things under control despite the pressures
and time-crushing schedules.
“Now I feel like I’ve got in under control. I’ve
adjusted well. My clinicals are almost done. I just had to figure
how to manage my time.”
Family ties
With both girls playing high school and club sports, and Macey not
too many years behind, it put the family to the test in trying to
follow and support each of them.
“It was absolutely crazy, especially before I started
driving,” says Madison. “There was a lot of planning to
do, because we also had our younger sister playing, too. You have
to be careful about giving too much attention to anyone, especially
with girls.”
All of that travel didn’t keep anyone from
participating.
“They wanted us involved in stuff, so there was never anyone
saying, ‘oh, you can’t make it’ to something.
” They found a way to get us where we needed to be, even if
it meant them taking time off. I can’t thank my parents
enough for all the stuff they did. We stressed them out with all
that. It’s just incredible how they made it all
work.”
“It was tough. We just juggled things,” explains
Wendy. “There were many times they were playing in different
cities. We’d just figure out how we were going to manage
where we were going to be.”
Many times the family was forced to split up and go in different
directions to follow the daughters.
Having two sisters at the same college will help reduce travel
from the pinball-like bouncing around from site to site.
“They come to a lot of games, especially since it’s my
senior year and especially when we both have big home games,”
Madison says. “They make it to a lot of games, but if they do
stay at home, they watch the webstream of it, and they connect it
to the big screen TV in our basement. They have people over, make
food and they dress up our dog with a jersey.
Great Eights
And, of course the dog’s jersey bears the number
“8” just like both Keyes’ Golden Eagle game
jerseys (left). That, however, was not planned.
“Actually, Michaella requested a different number. They just
happened to give her eight,” Madison says.
“I really wanted number five,” says Michaella.
“Number five has been my number for the longest
time.”
Madison tried to go in a different direction.
“When I started playing volleyball, they asked what number I
wanted and I chose 58 because she was five and I was eight at the
time. But nobody’s 58 in volleyball, so I just took the 8. My
big numbers were 13, 36, and five. I guess eight was all that was
left.”
And Macey requested the number eight for her high school
volleyball jersey, and wears it proudly in tribute to her older
sisters.
Different roads
So, exactly how did two seemingly close sisters end up playing two
distinctly different sports in college?
“I actually started playing volleyball because I got cut
from the soccer team,” admits Madison. “I got cut from
the team in seventh grade. I wanted to stay active, so I started
running cross country in high school. The next fall, I saw girls
going into the gym wearing knee pads, and I checked into that, and
I thought maybe I’d try out for volleyball.
“I literally tried out for volleyball with absolutely no
experience,” she admits.
“She couldn’t even serve a ball overhand over the net
when she went to tryout,” says Michaella.
Madison was the last person added to the eighth grade team. The
next year, there was a new coach at the helm. According to Madison,
the new coach was “really intense.”
“If you can’t serve a ball, you’re cut right
there,” he told the hopefuls. “I was in
trouble.”
Enter Kristen Hammergren, the neighbor who lived across the
street. She was four years older than Madison and had just gotten a
full scholarship offer to play volleyball in Pittsburgh for
Duquesne University.
“She took me to the high school gym and taught me how to
serve,” Madison recalls. “The day of tryouts I made two
serves over the net, and I made the team. It was enough to get me
on the team, but I knew for the next two years if I wanted to keep
playing, I needed to get better, so I played club, I took private
lessons, and I really improved a lot my sophomore and junior
years.”
During her junior season at Sycamore, she followed the lead of
other players on her team who were making recruiting videos in
hopes of gaining the attention of college coaches.
“My teammates questioned why I would make one, but I went
ahead and did,” she says, and sent it out to several
schools.
She was talking with coaches at Wright State, IUPUI and
Evansville, among others, and (then TTU coach) John Blair sent a
letter asking her to visit Cookeville.
“On my visit, he offered me a scholarship and I just knew it
was the right place. I really liked the campus, the girls on the
team were really nice, and I had always wanted to go south. I hate
the cold and the weather in Cincinnati. So, I accepted the
offer and came to Tech.”
The second sister
Michaella’s journey to Tech took a slightly different route,
and because of a serious injury in her senior season, almost
didn’t happen.
During her freshman year in high school, she played
“down” a level for the U15 club team in her area.
“Then, in my sophomore year, I decided I wanted to play in
college, so I moved ‘up’ a level. I went from U15 to
U17, and I skipped U16. That’s when I really decided. I was
talking to some schools, and talking to the coach at Tech (former
coach Daniel Brizard).
Once she made the decision to attend Tech, Madison played a key
role.
“Her being here really influenced me,” Michaella says.
“We decided that since I was also going into nursing, we
should just live together.”
The living arrangement not only saved money, but it made it
convenient for their parents to have them both at one school.
But, wait, we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves.
Michaella secured a position on the highest level club team in the
area, but halfway through her senior high school season, she
suffered an injury, tearing her ACL and was forced to miss the
remainder of her final season and a full season of club. The injury
happened in October, and she didn’t delay the start of
rehab.
“She worked really hard in rehab,” recalls Madison.
“She was going three days a week, trying to get ready to come
here. She was really pushing it, doing rehab and also doing
even more on her own.”
With the injury coming in October, and signing day not scheduled
until the spring, Michaella was determined to be ready to go when
the time came. She decided to commit to Tennessee Tech, but had to
tell Brizard that she had torn her ACL. She was worried he
wouldn’t want her anymore.
They talked about it, and he told her to come anyway.
“You know what? Let’s go,” is what Michaella
recalls of the conversation with Brizard. “Let’s just
see what you’ve got.”
“He told me that he had other girls who had those types of
injuries in the past, and wanted me to have the opportunity to give
it a try,” she says.
About a week later, Tech made a coaching change as Brizard stepped
down and administration began a national search for a new head
coach.
All through the next couple months of rehab, Tech was really
supportive of me in everything,” she says, beginning with
assistant coach Corey Boyd and continuing when Steve Springthorpe
was named head coach.
“They told me ‘just get back, get back into it.’
They would call me every week and ask about how rehab was going,
how running was going, and how I felt. They were cool.”
Once she arrived on campus, her season was almost derailed as it
pulled out of the station. On the second day of practice, while
running the stairs of the stadium, she slipped and fell and
suffered an injury close to her recently healed ACL. She missed a
week of practice while recovering from that injury.
Still, she has brought several intangibles to the team, according
to her coach.
“She has shown a really good character in her role,”
Springthorpe says. “She has been really accepting of her role
and she is working very hard to improve. She challenges our other
players when she’s on the second squad. Against our top 11,
she makes it hard on the defensive team. She’s attentive, and
she does everything expected of her from a coaching
perspective.”
What does it mean
Playing a sport is important to each of the sisters.
“Playing soccer means everything to me,” says
Michaella, who is in the Honors program at Tech.
“That’s what I identify myself with. When I go to
introduce myself, I say ‘Hi, I’m Michaella, I play
soccer,’ because I’ve done it all my life,
year-round.”
For Madison, the dedication required to compete in sports has also
defined many aspects of her.
“Volleyball represents a lot of hard work and determination.
I like setting a goal and saying this is what I want to do.
Volleyball has taught me a lot of things, and made me a better
person in so many ways. From all the people I’ve met, to time
management, to leadership. It’s helped in knowing how to
communicate with people, to work things out, to being a team
player. It’s taken a lot for me to get to where I
am.”
And many of those traits are clearly seen by volleyball coach Dave
Zelenock.
“She has done a really good job of learning what works with
each of her teammates and adjusting to that,” he says.
“She’s shown great maturity. She has really grown
in the two years I’ve known her. She has become more
accepting and tolerant of the different personalities in her
teammates. She’s there for them to help them get the very
best out of each of themselves.”
Not only are they playing sports they love, but doing so on the
Division I level in college. That, too, means much to them.
“To be able to get an education while playing as a college
student-athlete, that’s an opportunity that a lot of people
will never have,” Madison reflects. “I really
appreciate the opportunity I’ve had. I never really thought
about it, but when I see the reaction of people when they learn
I’m a student-athlete, I realize how hard it has
been.”
For Michaella, even though she has only just embarked on a career
as a collegiate student-athlete, the immensity of it has already
sunk in.
“High school was one thing, and club was pretty serious, but
this is a whole other level of commitment,” she says.
“It’s so much more. It takes so much more.”
Name Game
Madison and Michaella share more than a common uniform number and
apartment address. Each of them (and sister Macey, as well)
has Aleen as a middle name. It’s a name that has been passed
down in the family. It was the middle name of their grandmother,
Wendy’s mom.
Madison Aleen E. Keyes also has the initial ‘E’ in her
title. It stands for her great grandmother, Eleanor.
“She died right before I was born, so they gave me her
name,” she explains.
Michaella Aleen C. Keyes got the initial ‘C’ which
stands for Claudette. She was supposed to be a boy, according to
her elder sister, named for their father, Michael Claude. So, they
turned it into Michealla Claudette.
The youngest is Macey Aleen N. Keyes. The ‘N’ is for
Nanette, which was Mike’s mom’s name.
It’s getting better
Both sisters play on teams that are striving to rebuild to
championship levels, and each sees progress within her team.
“I think the soccer team is growing better and
better,” says Michaella. “I see it in the mentality
about the team, about what we say about our own team. When people
might criticize or say something negative, we don’t go along
with it. It’s a whole new mindset.”
She says there’s a sincere camaraderie within the team.
“It’s really good. Everyone is friends,” she
says. “Everybody includes each other. On the field, if
we’re having a bad day, there’s always somebody to pick
you up.
“We just have to to be patient. It’s a whole new
coaching staff, a whole new style of doing everything. It’s
working. We’re getting back. We can see it building every
practice, every game. We are all totally dedicated to getting
better.”
That’s the assessment of a squad under a first-year coach
(Springthorpe). The appraisal by Madison of the volleyball team
under a second-year coach (Zelenock) is also positive.
“We’re really focused on what we need to get done.
We’re all very serious about getting better. When you have 14
girls, you have a lot of drama and stuff, but I don’t think
there’s any conflicts within this team.”
She said the squad is moving forward.
“We’ve lost a lot of games, and we’ve been
through a lot. Losing is never easy. You get a lot of people
blaming other people. But I think we’ve been tough and stuck
through it, and we’ve continued to work hard. We’ve put
in the work to rebuild the program, and I feel we’re getting
things going. We’re starting to win more now, and when
the team wins more in years to come we’ll feel like we
contributed to that rebuilding. We know how much we’ve been
through, and we can take pride in knowing we toughed it
out.”
It was something the players on the squad began to sense a year
ago, when matches were marked with many close losses.
“We could definitely feel we were getting closer. We had
good team chemistry and we could see it in our skill sets.
We’re just now realizing what it takes to win. Last year we
began the transition, and this year we’re putting it to work
and starting to win those close games.”
Any advice?
As the younger of the pair, Michaella doesn’t have many
opportunities to offer advice.
“It’s just like when she’s having her little
breakdowns with so much going on, I just tell her, ‘calm
down, it will be over in a couple weeks.’ She won’t
have to deal with volleyball and nursing at the same time. I help
her calm down. I have four more years of this, but she’s
almost finished.”
Madison, on the other hand, can dish out plenty of advice to her
little sis.
“Oh, yeah, and it’s not always welcomed but I give it
anyway. I think she listens and pays attention. She’s trying
to figure out her own way. She’s a freshman. She has to live
her own life and get her own experiences. I know I did my own dumb
freshman stuff.”
And in the end…
Combining a career as a student-athlete with the rigors of working
toward a nursing degree have forced Madison (and eventually
Michaella) to sacrifice much along the way. There’s been
little or no time for anything outside of those two realms.
“Volleyball means a lot to me, but nursing is the rest of my
life. It’s my career. I’m not going to play volleyball
in the future. I’m not going pro,” Madison admits.
When she walks across the stage next May in Eblen Center to accept
her degree, she won’t look back over her shoulder and
wonder.
“I will have no regrets, absolutely no regrets. I’m
going to be extremely proud of myself for making it through all of
this. I may have scared the freshmen away from nursing. Not many
people get to even be a nursing major, and to be a student-athlete
on top of it. A lot of people warned me how difficult it would be,
and it has been really hard, but it will be so worth it. How many
people can say they’ve done what I’ve done?”
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