By Graham Hays

Vanderbilt Athletics

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Lake 5-foot-11 senior setter Taryn DeWese is one of six student-athletes who have already committed to play for Vanderbilt University’s newly reinstated volleyball program.

Dewese, the Northern Buckeye Conference and District 7 Division II Player of the year, is a three-time first team All-Northern Buckeye Conference selection who has been named all-district three times, once to the first team and twice to the second team.

Dewese, a Bowling Green native, has tallied more than 1,000 career kills and assists. Off the court, she volunteers with bitty volleyball and her church’s food bank. She has also been a member of her school’s honor roll for the past three years.

Dewese’s senior season she led the Flyers to a 21-7 season, NBC championship, and a trip to the Division II regional finals, where they lost to eventual state runner-up Gates Mills Gilmour Academy. A big reaason for that was Dewese.

“She’s such a smart player,” Lake coach Amy Vorst said. “She can hit the ball hard when she makes contact, which is hard to defense.”

Dewese finished the season with a team-high 426 kills, a team-high 76 aces, 38 blocks (including four solo blocks), 272 digs, and 356 assists.

First-year Vanderbilt coach Anders Nelson’s initial recruiting class will begin training in the fall of 2024 in preparation for the team’s first season of competition, which will begin competing in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in the fall of 2025.

“When we started to build this class, we were looking for student-athletes who had the courage to seize a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, could compete at the SEC level and were the type of young women who match the elite reputation of Vanderbilt,” Nelson said. “This group exceeded our expectations.”

Hailee Mack (Louisville, Kentucky) was the first student-athlete to verbally commit to Nelson’s program, followed by Giovanna Mason (Austin, Texas), Reese Animashaun (Houston, Texas), DeWese, Madison Bowser (Vienna, Virginia) and Rachel Ogunleye (Bloomington, Illinois).

“This group has a desire to be a part of history and the determination to lay the foundation of this program with our coaching staff,” Nelson said. “They will exemplify the characteristics of a Vanderbilt volleyball student-athlete on the court, in the classroom and in the Nashville community.

“These six student-athletes will leave legacies that tell stories of their courage as the first signees in the reemergence of our program.”

Dewese’s road to Vanderbilt was not initiated so much by her family or people here, but by Nelson’s assistant coaches Russell Corbelli and Lauren Plum.

In February, Corbelli received a message from a friend about a setter from Northwest Ohio they had spotted at a small tournament the Vanderbilt coaches hadn’t had the bandwidth to attend.

The student-athlete didn’t even have much of a social media presence — a rarity for this day and age — but Plum pieced together enough video to be intrigued.

So began DeWese’s journey to Vanderbilt.

Plum texted her to introduce herself and the program and set up a time to chat on the phone. They talked about Vanderbilt but also about families and life, Plum trying to learn the aspects of personality and spirit that are impossible to see on film.

Soon enough, she learned that DeWese had three older brothers — the latter joking that if the call with Plum went on too long, there wouldn’t be anything of dinner left for her to eat.

Nelson recalled how enthusiastic Plum was about DeWese when she filled in the rest of the staff during one of their regular recruiting meetings.

Plum grew up with uber-competitive siblings — after a Vanderbilt staff fall retreat in the North Carolina woods, Nelson and Corbelli readily agreed that she would be the last one standing if they were left stranded in the wild.

Sure enough, Plum touted DeWese’s sibling survival instincts as proof of character.

“That’s such a Lauren thing to love,” Nelson chuckled. “But for Lauren to come back so impressed with who she was, that made Taryn move up in my book right away.”

Earlier this fall, DeWese served a perfect set for Lake — 17 aces en route to serving all 25 points. She lives and breathes the sport and told Plum she wanted to take volleyball as far as she could, maybe even follow Plum’s path to play at a professional level.

But mixed in with the big dreams, she worked at a snack bar in what little free time she had to cover the more mundane expenses of life as a teenager.

“She is just a down to earth, hardworking kid,” Plum said. “And so many things lined up with what I would want in a setter.

“She has room to grow in skill development, but she has the intangibles. For her high school, she had more than a thousand kills, a thousand assists and almost a thousand digs.

“She’s an all-around stud. She’s a perfect kid for me to work with for a year. Not having to hit the ground running in the SEC is huge for her development. The world is hers if she wants it, and if she’s willing to work for it.”

DeWese visited Vanderbilt at the same time as her future teammate, Bowser. Strangers before that moment, one from small-town Ohio and the other from the nation’s capital, they forged an immediate connection that kept them up most of the night talking.

Bowser, at 6-3, is a member of Metro Volleyball Club of D.C. where she plays middle hitter, and she played high school volleyball for Bishop O’Connell High School in Virginia.

(from a feature by Graham Hayes for Vanderbilt University Athletics with contributions from Sentinel-Tribune Sports Editor J. Patrick Eaken)