Senior’s volleyball career winds down
Team leader is only Jayhawk with 1,000 digs, assists, kills
Emily Brown, a four-year starter, has lived volleyball for a long time, thanks to her mother. She may continue down that road in the future as a coach.
By Rustin Dodd (Contact)
Tuesday, November 13th, 2007
It’s been only 30 minutes since Texas A&M beat the Kansas volleyball team 3-0 — the team’s seventh loss in eight matches — but Jill Brown knows she’s going to get a phone call. She knows the voice on the other end will be her daughter, Emily, a senior setter and right side on the Kansas volleyball team, and she knows what her daughter is going to say.
“No matter how well she played, she’s never done enough,” Jill Brown said. “She always feels like she could have done more.”
It doesn’t matter that Emily Brown finished the match with 11 kills, 22 assists, and 12 digs — a performance that showcased her versatile collection of volleyball talents.
It’s the type of performance Emily Brown has given the Kansas volleyball program for the past four years. But on Nov. 21, the Brown era will come to an end, as she will play her 119th and final match in a Kansas uniform. Kansas will travel to Lubbock, Texas, to play Texas Tech, perhaps an unfitting final chapter for a player who has left her fingerprints all over the Kansas volleyball history books. Brown — the only player in Kansas history with 1,000 career kills, digs and assists — has been a key presence on the volleyball team all four years. Displaying postal service-like reliability, Brown has been on the floor for every single match since the first match of her freshman season.
But Brown’s volleyball career began well before her first game at Kansas. It’s a career that has been defined by a family bond, and a story of a daughter following in the footsteps of her mother.
A humble beginning
Twenty miles south of Lawrence, Baldwin City sits tucked along Highway 56. Small antique shops line the brick roads of downtown. City Hall sits on the corner, one block down from the post office. The 3,000-person community is dripping with small-town charm.
This is where Emily Brown grew up.
“Baldwin rocks,” Emily said with a smile.
She’s heard the small-town complaints before.
“People always say, ‘There’s nothing to do,’ ” she said. “But it’s all I know. So it’s not like it was like ‘Oh, it’s terrible.’ It’s just what I was used to, and it was a small town, but we were so close to Lawrence.”
And being close to Lawrence meant one thing for Brown.
“I was a huge KU basketball fan,” Brown said.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that her mom and aunt were both former Kansas volleyball players. Jill Brown graduated from Kansas in 1979, and it was Jill who introduced her daughter to the game.
If her mother was playing in a co-ed league or a sand volleyball tournament, Emily was there, watching and learning. But she wasn’t just watching. She was playing — a lot. Her schedule was packed with volleyball matches, basketball games and track meets.
“Our family was basically at some sort of game every night,” Emily’s older brother, Eric, said. Eric Brown, who earned All-American honors in the javelin at the University of Arkansas, remembered his parents going through more than one car driving to all the athletic events.
The mother-daughter combination continued when Jill coached Emily at Baldwin High School. Jill Brown admitted she was tougher on her daughter than most of her teammates.
“She had to be the first one in the gym and the last one to leave,” Jill Brown said.
Eric, who said he liked to claim he was the assistant coach, has fond memories of his family’s volleyball bonding.
“I helped out with the team a little bit, and it’s tough being the daughter of the coach, but I think Emily handled it quite well,” Eric said.
Mother and daughter proved to be a successful duo. Together they led Baldwin High School to a second-place finish in the 2003 Kansas 4A state volleyball tournament.
Kit Harris taught Emily in English and journalism classes at Baldwin High School. He said he remembered Jill Brown dressing up as the Saturday Night Live character, Stuart Smalley, before one of those state tournament matches.
“The best part was having that family connection. I think that’s what led me to volleyball,” Emily said.
A somber end
The final chapter in Brown’s college volleyball career is rapidly coming to a close. Brown has only three matches left before she hangs up the knee pads. No longer will Kansas fans see Brown bouncing around the court with her blond hair pulled back as she nervously chomps on a piece of gum. No longer will fans see her 6-foot-2 frame soaring for a kill, diving for a dig or doing her usual shimmy after an ace.
Brown can hardly believe it.
“I can’t believe four years ago I was in high school,” Brown said. “It seems like not so long ago.”
But Brown’s career hasn’t been all fairy tale. Kansas advanced to the NCAA tournament her freshman and sophomore seasons but has a combined record of 21-33 during her junior and senior seasons.
“I hate that,” Brown said. “You think, ‘OK, it was good when I was a freshman and sophomore,’ and now I’m one of the leaders, and I’m not able to get it done.”
A bright future
Although Brown’s volleyball days are numbered, she will be staying in Lawrence a little longer. Brown, an Academic All-Big 12 selection as a junior, is majoring in education and has one year left in the five-year program. She thinks she wants to get into coaching, but don’t hold her to that.
Her coach certainly thinks she has the intangible qualities to do the job. Kansas coach Ray Bechard said it was those qualities, such as the good grades, that made her successful.
“We always try to recruit players with traits that will add value to our program, and she has certainly done that,” Bechard said.
But the ride isn’t over yet. Brown still has three volleyball matches to play. Three more opportunities for Emily to call her mother and confess that she should have played better. Three more chances for mother and daughter to bond through volleyball.
“This is what I grew up with. Playing close to home has been great,” Brown said, adding that she couldn’t go to a home game without seeing a face or two from Baldwin City in the stands.
Eric Brown said that was the way his little sister had always been.
“She’s always been the hometown girl,” he said.
— Edited by Tara Smith
Discussion
All comments are moderated by Kansan.com staff. For our full user policy, click here.
Share your 2¢
Requires free registration.