Kansas State University Athletics
SE: K-State Volleyball’s Only Senior Just Needed a Few Months to Make a Difference
Nov 09, 2020 | Volleyball, Sports Extra
By: Austin Siegel
She looked up and the ball just didn't come down.
Shelby Martin has 3,022 assists in her NCAA career and all of them have been a little different.
She can give you a quick shoot to the outside or a backset to somebody like Aliyah Carter rising high above the net.
Thousands of assists at East Carolina, a few hundred during her senior season at Kansas State, all with one thing in common: The ball always comes down.
Until one night this season against Oklahoma, when a dig from one of Martin's teammates bounced above the scoreboard at Bramlage Coliseum, landed on top and just started rolling.
"That has actually never happened to me before," Martin said. "I'm surprised I didn't lose it. That was total luck."
Martin waited, found the volleyball in the arena lights and dished off a set like nothing happened. A few seconds later, K-State won the point.
And while it's true that not everything in sports needs to be a metaphor, "playing a volleyball off the scoreboard" sums up Martin's life since March pretty nicely.
That's when K-State announced that Martin had joined the Wildcats as a transfer for her senior season, two days before the COVID-19 outbreak saw sports across the nation postponed.
"When I first committed, it was spring break and that's when everyone was like, 'Just one more week and everything will be back to normal.' I wasn't really thinking much of it," Martin said. "It was nerve-wracking at first, just figuring out how I was going to fit in."
Martin had established herself at East Carolina, named the AAC Freshman of the Year in 2017 and a member of the Preseason All-AAC team in 2018 and 2019. A new opportunity at K-State, while certainly a challenge, seemed within reach for a player with Martin's record of success.
But even after making the move official, Martin was still stuck in North Carolina. She didn't move to Kansas until June, followed by a mandatory quarantine and a lot of Zoom calls.
In any other year, Martin would have been busy during her first few months at a new school, getting to know her teammates at workouts and spending time together on the weekends.
In a COVID-19 season, things didn't settle down until Martin started classes in August.
"When you're a senior, you know more of what to expect, but when you transfer, it's like being a freshman all over again," Martin said. "I was still scared of what this school was going to be like, how the coaches were going to be and what the team was going to be like on the court. But I was more confident as a senior because I had that experience of playing at a higher level."
On the K-State team Martin joined in June, feeling like "a freshman all over again" gave the team's only senior something in common with many of her new teammates in Manhattan.
The Wildcats have at least a dozen underclassmen on their roster for the second straight season in 2020 - the first time in program history the team has had a dozen underclassmen in consecutive seasons.
With four games left in the 2020 season, a true freshman leads K-State in kills (Aliyah Carter), digs (Mackenzie Morris), blocks (Kadye Fernholz) and service aces (Morris, again).
Martin is the outlier – she leads the Wildcats in assists and rarely leaves the court as a setter.
In describing what Martin brings to K-State Volleyball, her head coach focused on two words: "composure and competitiveness."
Once again, it would be lazy writing to assume those character traits are going to show up in Martin's college major. Unless she was, let's say, majoring in Criminal Justice.
"I would love, love, love to work for the FBI. That's what I want to do eventually. I want to go into federal law enforcement on the psychological, behavioral side of it," she said. "I really love the way people's minds work, why they do what they do, why delinquency happens and what drives people to commit crimes."
Playing a sport like volleyball, it's easy for Martin to take her interest in the mental side of crime and use that same passion to find new ways of thinking about her favorite sport.
Her ability to communicate with every member of the Wildcats has been a strength for the senior, especially after joining the team after three seasons at East Carolina.
"I know how certain people work and how to talk to them - especially in a team dynamic, you can't talk to two people the same way," Martin said. "Knowing how people's minds works and finding out how they like to receive feedback, it can really help a lot."
Whether it's words of encouragement or getting a problem on the court corrected, Martin has embraced her role as both a transfer and a veteran player.
When a COVID-19-adjusted schedule forced K-State to scrap their non-conference season and spend much of the fall practicing at Bramlage Coliseum, Martin took full advantage.
Since the Wildcats didn't have to worry about traveling or non-conference tournaments, she said the team was free to focus on improving their team dynamic. Instead of playing matches, they were getting to know each other as people and players.
When the season finally arrived, Martin and her new teammates were ready.
"The first night when we played Iowa State, we finally had a crowd, an official game and a lineup," she said. "I think that was the first time I was like, 'Wow, I'm really playing for K-State and I get to be a leader.'"
All K-State has done in 2020 is put together their best season since 2016, when the team advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats are in third place in the Big 12 as they head into their last home series of the season against TCU.
Martin could end her K-State career with just eight home matches, a senior transfer playing in a season that was significantly shortened due to COVID-19.
If this is it for Martin's time in Manhattan, one of the shortest careers, in the most unusual circumstances in K-State Volleyball history will also go down as one of the most memorable.
That's because on the same night Martin played a ball off the scoreboard, she did something that no Wildcat had pulled off in six years – a triple-double with 38 assists, 11 kills and 10 digs.
Martin is the only player in the entire country to record a triple-double in 2020.
"I felt like she took over," Fritz said. "To have a setter who can create some offense like she does, we were talking to her like, 'Hey we might need you to go get you some right here.' It was a key component at the end of the match for her to get a couple swings in."
It was the final swing of the match that Martin will remember, as she quick hit the Sooners with a left-handed spike and the Wildcats clinging to a 14-13 lead in the fifth set.
It's the closest thing volleyball has to a walk-off with two outs in the ninth inning.
And in the celebration that followed, with Martin mobbed by her teammates at the net, the impact she has made in Manhattan was clear, especially if you can forgive one last metaphor.
"Usually when a game is that tight, I'm more focused on setting up my hitters and not me, but the opportunity was there," Martin said. "I just took a swing."
She looked up and the ball just didn't come down.
Shelby Martin has 3,022 assists in her NCAA career and all of them have been a little different.
She can give you a quick shoot to the outside or a backset to somebody like Aliyah Carter rising high above the net.
Thousands of assists at East Carolina, a few hundred during her senior season at Kansas State, all with one thing in common: The ball always comes down.
Until one night this season against Oklahoma, when a dig from one of Martin's teammates bounced above the scoreboard at Bramlage Coliseum, landed on top and just started rolling.
"That has actually never happened to me before," Martin said. "I'm surprised I didn't lose it. That was total luck."
Martin waited, found the volleyball in the arena lights and dished off a set like nothing happened. A few seconds later, K-State won the point.
And while it's true that not everything in sports needs to be a metaphor, "playing a volleyball off the scoreboard" sums up Martin's life since March pretty nicely.
That's when K-State announced that Martin had joined the Wildcats as a transfer for her senior season, two days before the COVID-19 outbreak saw sports across the nation postponed.
"When I first committed, it was spring break and that's when everyone was like, 'Just one more week and everything will be back to normal.' I wasn't really thinking much of it," Martin said. "It was nerve-wracking at first, just figuring out how I was going to fit in."
Martin had established herself at East Carolina, named the AAC Freshman of the Year in 2017 and a member of the Preseason All-AAC team in 2018 and 2019. A new opportunity at K-State, while certainly a challenge, seemed within reach for a player with Martin's record of success.
But even after making the move official, Martin was still stuck in North Carolina. She didn't move to Kansas until June, followed by a mandatory quarantine and a lot of Zoom calls.
In any other year, Martin would have been busy during her first few months at a new school, getting to know her teammates at workouts and spending time together on the weekends.
In a COVID-19 season, things didn't settle down until Martin started classes in August.
"When you're a senior, you know more of what to expect, but when you transfer, it's like being a freshman all over again," Martin said. "I was still scared of what this school was going to be like, how the coaches were going to be and what the team was going to be like on the court. But I was more confident as a senior because I had that experience of playing at a higher level."
On the K-State team Martin joined in June, feeling like "a freshman all over again" gave the team's only senior something in common with many of her new teammates in Manhattan.
The Wildcats have at least a dozen underclassmen on their roster for the second straight season in 2020 - the first time in program history the team has had a dozen underclassmen in consecutive seasons.
With four games left in the 2020 season, a true freshman leads K-State in kills (Aliyah Carter), digs (Mackenzie Morris), blocks (Kadye Fernholz) and service aces (Morris, again).
Martin is the outlier – she leads the Wildcats in assists and rarely leaves the court as a setter.
In describing what Martin brings to K-State Volleyball, her head coach focused on two words: "composure and competitiveness."
Once again, it would be lazy writing to assume those character traits are going to show up in Martin's college major. Unless she was, let's say, majoring in Criminal Justice.
"I would love, love, love to work for the FBI. That's what I want to do eventually. I want to go into federal law enforcement on the psychological, behavioral side of it," she said. "I really love the way people's minds work, why they do what they do, why delinquency happens and what drives people to commit crimes."
Playing a sport like volleyball, it's easy for Martin to take her interest in the mental side of crime and use that same passion to find new ways of thinking about her favorite sport.
Her ability to communicate with every member of the Wildcats has been a strength for the senior, especially after joining the team after three seasons at East Carolina.
"I know how certain people work and how to talk to them - especially in a team dynamic, you can't talk to two people the same way," Martin said. "Knowing how people's minds works and finding out how they like to receive feedback, it can really help a lot."
Whether it's words of encouragement or getting a problem on the court corrected, Martin has embraced her role as both a transfer and a veteran player.
When a COVID-19-adjusted schedule forced K-State to scrap their non-conference season and spend much of the fall practicing at Bramlage Coliseum, Martin took full advantage.
Since the Wildcats didn't have to worry about traveling or non-conference tournaments, she said the team was free to focus on improving their team dynamic. Instead of playing matches, they were getting to know each other as people and players.
When the season finally arrived, Martin and her new teammates were ready.
"The first night when we played Iowa State, we finally had a crowd, an official game and a lineup," she said. "I think that was the first time I was like, 'Wow, I'm really playing for K-State and I get to be a leader.'"
All K-State has done in 2020 is put together their best season since 2016, when the team advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats are in third place in the Big 12 as they head into their last home series of the season against TCU.
Martin could end her K-State career with just eight home matches, a senior transfer playing in a season that was significantly shortened due to COVID-19.
If this is it for Martin's time in Manhattan, one of the shortest careers, in the most unusual circumstances in K-State Volleyball history will also go down as one of the most memorable.
That's because on the same night Martin played a ball off the scoreboard, she did something that no Wildcat had pulled off in six years – a triple-double with 38 assists, 11 kills and 10 digs.
Martin is the only player in the entire country to record a triple-double in 2020.
"I felt like she took over," Fritz said. "To have a setter who can create some offense like she does, we were talking to her like, 'Hey we might need you to go get you some right here.' It was a key component at the end of the match for her to get a couple swings in."
It was the final swing of the match that Martin will remember, as she quick hit the Sooners with a left-handed spike and the Wildcats clinging to a 14-13 lead in the fifth set.
Slam it home
— K-State Volleyball (@KStateVB) October 24, 2020
🗣 Cats Win!#KStateVB pic.twitter.com/BqhHvMheUL
It's the closest thing volleyball has to a walk-off with two outs in the ninth inning.
And in the celebration that followed, with Martin mobbed by her teammates at the net, the impact she has made in Manhattan was clear, especially if you can forgive one last metaphor.
"Usually when a game is that tight, I'm more focused on setting up my hitters and not me, but the opportunity was there," Martin said. "I just took a swing."
Players Mentioned
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