Bolding Destined to play College Volleyball

By: D. Scott Fritchen

This is a story about "meant to be." It begins with Sydney Bolding. She is 7. She lives in Pickens, South Carolina. And she loves volleyball. And she loves volleyball because, well, she loves watching her older sister, Taylor, play the sport. Sydney is too young to play organized volleyball. She bumps the volleyball on her closed fists. She tries to bump the ball 10 straight times. Then 20. Over and over. She bumps the ball to herself off of the side of her parents' house. She imagines. She dreams. It feels natural.

"I don't know, I feel like it was just a meant-to-be-thing," she chuckles on the other end of the phone. "I was just so in love with it."

She doesn't think about other activities. She continues to grow. Her passion for volleyball grows along with her — "I was obsessed with volleyball," she says — and the middle school basketball coach asks her to play basketball, and she politely declines, and then the Pickens High School coach asks her to play varsity basketball, and she politely says no again, because this volleyball thing, man, this volleyball thing is real.

"It was always my dream," she says, "to play in college."

So here we are, and yes, dreams come true, and Sydney is a 6-foot-5 senior middle blocker at Kansas State, and she isn't good at volleyball, she's great, and she ranks fourth in the Big 12 Conference in blocks per set (1.33), fifth in service aces per set (0.43) and 10^th in hitting percentage (.338), and she's been named to the K-State Invitational All-Tournament Team and the Rambler Challenge All-Tournament Team, and she had a career-high 13 kills and seven blocks against NC State, and she had a career high-tying eight blocks against Rice. She had four aces against Missouri and four aces in the first set alone against St. Thomas.

In today's lingo, she's killing it.

"It makes me really proud that I can do that for my team, because we all work really, really hard every single day," she says. "The stats just show that it's working. It's not just me that makes my stats really great. It's the passing and setting and the whole group, so it just makes me really proud of everybody."

K-State finished its non-conference season with a 9-4 record and opens the Big 12 season against Kansas, 10-2, at 4 p.m. Saturday at Bramlage Coliseum. It's the Sunflower Showdown. It's one of the biggest-drawing volleyball games of the year. And Sydney loves the crowds. Sydney loves the fans. And Sydney is stoked that the league season is upon the Wildcats, who look to advance to the NCAA Tournament for a second-straight year.

"I feel like during the preseason we proved that we can compete at a really high level and play with really high-level teams," she says. "I'm really, really excited going into this KU game, having a week off of games, and being able to be in the gym together in practice. I'm very confident in our team and super excited to play this weekend."

Sydney currently averages 1.33 blocks per set. That means she is on pace to finish top-10 in K-State history for blocks per set in a single season. She practices blocking literally every day. There's a method to blocking, you see, and it's not just sheer luck that she blocks volleyballs at a remarkable rate. There's a technique to all of this. And it begins with watching the eyes. The eyes don't lie. She watches the eyes of the setter. The setter's eyes often expose the method of attack. She watches the hitters. Sometimes there are three hitters. Which one will get the ball? Which one will attack? It's a game. It can be almost hypnotizing. Sydney focuses on pressing in. She focuses on the angle of her hands and arms and then leaps and — BAM! — she thwarts another attack.

"When you get a block," she says, "it feels really good."

There was a time when Sydney wondered, though, if this was actually meant to be. That moment came sometime during COVID when she was playing volleyball at Jacksonville. Due to restrictions, there was no practice and there were no games and the season couldn't even start until the spring, so there were literally months when Sydney was unable to train. It was the longest break from volleyball in her life. It can wear on the biggest of competitors.

Even the girl who began to dream at age 7.

"I kind of lost that drive and motivation," she says.

Sydney loved her coaches at Jacksonville. She still had 344 kills and hit .353 to go along with 135 blocks during her two seasons at Jacksonville. She still led the ASUN Conference with a .392 hitting percentage in 2019 and ranked in the top 10 with 90 total blocks. She regained her drive and finished out her two seasons at Jacksonville in style — a career-high 21 kills at a .563 clip and eight blocks against Stetson followed by 19 kills, five blocks and a .531 efficiency against Florida Gulf Coast to earn ASUN Player of the Week in March 2021. She was the first Jacksonville player to earn league player-of-the-week honors since 2017.

But her dream was big. She desired something more.

"I had a really great experience at Jacksonville," she says, "but I was just very motivated to take it to the next level and play for a bigger conference."

Sydney entered the transfer portal, fell in love with K-State over the other Power 5 schools, and headed to Manhattan.

"I felt like K-State was meant to be," she says.

Last season, she fought off injury — a sprained ankle delayed her debut with the Wildcats last season — but she finished with 104 kills while hitting .268 and ranked second on the team with 79 total blocks to go along with 21 digs, five aces and four assists. She appeared in 22 matches with 18 starts and played in 76 sets. She was just getting comfortable.

And now?

"I'm comfortable, so I'm taking it to the next level," she says.

But she isn't focused on reaching milestones.

"I don't think about, 'I really want to win this award,' or 'I want to hit this number,' but I just kind of take it day by day because if I don't things can get overwhelming," she says. "That'd be my biggest piece of advice for somebody going into college-level sports is to take it day by day and not think about next month, or it's going to be too overwhelming."

And so, she's taking things day by day. She isn't sure if she'll return for a second senior season in 2023-24. She looks at younger teammates and tries to pave the way and show them how to operate and flourish and be a team player. Most of all, she absorbs every moment.

"Being a senior, it's something you don't really realize until you get to this point, but you see things from a very different perspective," she says. "You see things in a whole new light."

What has she learned about herself along the way?

"I've definitely learned that physically and mentally I can do a lot more than what I sometimes feel like I can do in the moment," she says. "I can push past what I once thought was my limit."

It all goes back to the girl bumping the volleyball to herself against the side of her parents' house back home in Pickens, South Carolina. The girl is 7. She's still too young to play organized sports. But she imagines. She dreams. And, oh, what a journey it'll be.

"It was always volleyball for me," she says.

And now she's here.

And it's like it was meant to be.

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Sydney Bolding

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