Katherine Jin’s game is built on reaction time and reading hitters, and she’s specific about how she trains it: reaction-time buttons at home, a ladder and hurdles for footwork, deliberate reps outside of practice. Mid-rally at her AAU tournament, she recognized a setter pushing a set too tight, called out the tip before her own setter even reacted to it, and then found herself already in position to dive and save the ball her setter could only partially control. She described her body moving into coverage before she’d consciously decided to, the kind of instinct that only comes from repetition.

What makes Kate especially interesting to track isn’t just the volleyball. She’s started her own podcast, “Student Athletes Unscripted,” built specifically because she noticed most content for young athletes was being made by adults rather than by peers. She’s headed to camps at MIT, Brown, and Harvard this summer, curious to see how volleyball IQ and academic rigor intersect at that level. As an eighth grader, she took the SAT and scored 1530, and she won her school’s sole academic honor for the entire grade, the Steven W. Surbaugh Award for excellence in STEM.

~ Michelle Bamford @Coachable247