Dominating with a Smile

HER SMILE CAN disarm the nervous child who wonders whether to approach for an autograph, and it can provide reassurance to the one who may be self-conscious about being the tallest in their class.

But beyond a doubt, Kendall Kipp’s smile proves that intensity and focus on the volleyball court does not have to drown out joy.

The ever-present smile is the first thing many notice about Kipp, the Stanford All-American. It reminds us that even in the tension of an NCAA tournament, where a miscalculation or lapse could cost a team its season, that volleyball remains a game.

The game is one of details, of inches, of millimeters. Fifth set. Tie score. Season on the line.

And still, Kipp smiles.

“It’s just the way I am,” said Kipp, a national player of the year candidate. “I just enjoy playing volleyball so much. It’s just my nature. If I started getting grumpy and serious and pouty on the court, my teammates would probably be a little concerned because that’s not my role. I’m just trying to enjoy the moment and move on to the next point.”

As No. 2-ranked Stanford advances into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament with a home match against Arizona State on Thursday at Maples Pavilion, Kipp will be staring at the end of her collegiate career. Stanford is a veteran team, full of talented players like Pac-12 Setter of the Year Kami Miner, All-American outside hitter Caitie Baird, four-year starting middle blocker McKenna Vicini, Pac-12 Libero of the Year Elena Oglivie, and all-conference middle Sami Francis and outside hitter Elia Rubin.

It's a team that knows what it’s doing, loves hostile environments, and has seen it all. But the Cardinal players experience pressure too. And when they do, it’s often Kipp, a 6-foot-5 opposite hitter, to whom they turn.

“I feel confident when I look around at my teammates and remember everything that we’ve been training for and how capable each person is,” Vicini said. “I see the determination behind my teammates’ eyes and know that we’ve been through hard times before and overcome them.

“Kendall plays a huge role in those stressful moments. She’s great at staying level-headed and reminding everyone to have confidence in themselves, because you can see how much she believes in the rest of the team.”

Kipp says simply, “I hate to lose.” The smile may fade from time to time, but the effort never does. When the ball is served, particularly in one of those typically precarious moments, Kipp seems to shine.

“She’s at her best when it matters most,” said Kevin Hambly, Stanford’s Montag Family Director of Women's Volleyball. “That’s when her competitiveness comes in and her determination to win. There are times when she’s the only one scoring and she’s carrying us. That’s where I see it: C’mon, I can do this. Give it to me and I can carry us right now.”

A 28-3 record … a Pac-12 championship … 11 top-25 victories, including seven in the top 10 … Stanford can seem like a machine. But under the surface, Hambly knows the team is playing from behind.

THE COVID SHUTDOWN seems like a long time ago, but the effects still are being felt within the program.

The mental images still seem hard to believe: Training outdoors on a tennis court because Maples Pavilion was off-limits, not being allowed to rally because Santa Clara County’s restrictions prevented more than two people from touching a ball without it being wiped down.

The team lost the spring of 2020 because of the shutdown. And then it lost the spring of 2021 because an abbreviated season was shifted from the fall. Kipp’s first Stanford spring training – a foundational period of training and fundamentals -- didn’t happen until 2022.

Stanford won a national championship in the fall of 2019 and, after COVID, there was the expectation that the Cardinal would bounce right back and compete for another. Instead, Stanford was forced to rely more on athletic ability in the next two seasons than it would prefer, rather than a style of refined system of play that would have come with more advanced and extended training.

“Spring training is where you learn everything,” Kipp said. “It was wild that I was playing my junior season and not a single person on our team had a spring training yet. It felt like we were all freshmen on the court.”

During a competitive season, full of matches and rest and recovery, there isn’t time to get deep into the fundamentals.

“I feel like we’re still playing catchup sometimes,” Vicini said. “We’re learning things that we probably could have mastered a little bit faster if we had those two springs.”

Early in the fall of 2021, after the Cardinal had endured a 2-8 season in 2020-21, Stanford upended No. 5 Florida in four sets.

“Kevin, are we back?” asked Bernard Muir, Stanford’s Jaquish & Kenninger Director of Athletics.

Hambly knew the victory was deceptive.

“We didn’t have the foundation,” Hambly recalled. “We happened to put it together for one night. But, over time, we knew we would be exposed.”

Stanford went 19-11 that season and was swept by Minnesota in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

“We were as athletic as a team,” Hambly said. “But we didn’t have the same foundation.”

The spring of 2022 – Stanford’s first spring training in three years -- would be crucial.

“We really got to work,” Hambly said. “We broke a lot of things down to the core. We got back to the basics.”

How basic?

“How to stand,” he said. “What should our posture be like? How do we move? Understanding how the body moves and how that relates to playing volleyball.

“We didn’t understand how to put force in the floor to initiate movement. We didn’t understand how to use our bodies to attack harder. Our approaches were a mess. I didn’t get to approaches until this last year.

“We started with the most important thing, which was serve and pass. And defense.”

The pandemic shutdown helped in one aspect. It allowed Hambly to sink into international volleyball. He watched video of the best teams in the world and broke down the technical aspects of cutting-age systems and styles of play, to incorporate new twists into Stanford’s program. But that takes time, and each spring, he’s been able to add a little bit more.

“It wasn’t a challenge,” Hambly said. “It was actually a relief. I have all these talented athletes and they don’t know how to play the game because we haven’t had the time to teach them.”

With the help of Kimberly and Beverly Oden Assistant Coach Alex Dunphy and assistant coach Mike Johnson, who each arrived that spring of 2022, they embarked on a “rebuild.”

“It was invigorating, to be honest,” Hambly said. “It felt like a restart. We had to rebuild not just volleyball, but also the whole culture and learning what it takes to win. It was a lot, and they were eager to do it. They were dying to get better.

“The expectations of being at Stanford are real. And, I think, for all of them, they were like, please help us. Help us be the team that we should be. And we’re getting closer to that all the time. We’re still teaching. There’s still more to learn.”

For Kipp, being receptive to teaching and learning is her super power. And that’s been crucial, because she had to start from further back than most.

 

THE YOUNGEST OF four children by seven years, Kendall was an unwilling passenger to her sisters’ volleyball matches and tournaments. Kasey, 11 years older, played at UC Santa Barbara. Conley, nine years older, played at Washington State and Hope International.

“I would sit there, at these tournaments that went from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. and I hated it,” Kendall said. “I wanted to be running around and playing with my friends. Not having to sit in the bleachers. I was not a fan of volleyball at first just because I had boring memories associated with it.”

A young Kipp swore she would be an Olympian in either swimming or soccer. Her parents never pushed her into volleyball. In fact, she found the sport on her own terms, which is how the self-described “stubborn” Kendall preferred it.

“No one pressured me to, which I think is why I ended up wanting to do it,” she said.

When her friends started playing in middle school, seventh-grade Kendall thought she’d give it a try. Consider also her hometown: Newport Beach is a high-achieving family-oriented community and a hotbed of volleyball.

Kipp, who grew up on the East Bluff Harbor View area surrounded by parks, pools, fields, and greenbelts, said, “I can’t imagine a better place to grow up. Everything is top-level. Growing up around that, you just have certain standards and expectations for yourself.”

Volleyball, at first, was a struggle.

“I had no control over my body at all,” she said. “I was a mess. I was the worst on my team. I had no skills. I didn’t even think I was going to make the middle school team. I was so goofy, everyone called me, ‘The Baby Deer on Ice Skates.’”

“I remember seeing her as a seventh-grader,” said Steve Astor, who would become her coach at Corona del Mar High School and now is an assistant at Kansas State. “She was super long, super skinny, but it was pretty clear she was a different-level athlete. That was obvious from afar.”

Two years after taking up the sport, Kipp was a freshman starting in a raucous enemy gym at rival Newport Harbor High before a standing-room-only crowd.

“It tests your character for sure,” Astor said. “That area is the best in the country for high school volleyball. It’s fight or flight. Sink or swim. We played in some gnarly environments with students yelling at you. In all those rivalry matches, I don’t remember her ever playing poorly.”

While playing middle blocker as a sophomore in a CIF Southern Section playoff match against Edison of Huntington Beach – “probably the biggest match of her life,” to that point, Astor said -- CdM trailed two sets to zero. But Kipp led a rally and, 24 kills later, CdM had a five-set comeback victory.

Kipp said the turning point in her development was a choice she made.

She got her start with Prime Volleyball Club, where all her friends played. But her parents encouraged her to try out with other clubs.

She settled on a new club in Irvine called Momentous, where her coach would be Dan O’Dell. She only had to decide what she wanted from volleyball. How serious did she want to make it? Serious enough to leave her friends?

“I cried about it for weeks,” Kipp said. “I had no idea what to do, I was so stressed. As a middle school girl, that’s what you’re worried about. I was scared that if I left, all my friends would keep getting closer and I would be left out in the dust.”

Kipp chose to dedicate herself to volleyball, making social sacrifices along the way. She was lifted by the encouragement of O’Dell, who told her, “You can be an Olympian if you want to be. You can play at any college you want. I can help you get there.”

Kipp didn’t expect that.

“I didn’t think I had that much potential,” Kipp said. “I didn’t take it that seriously yet. I just thought it was a fun sport all my friends were playing. But once I heard that, it gave me the confidence to really go for it because other people believed in me. Then, I started believing in myself and started setting higher goals.”

Kipp turned to the gym, building muscle and explosiveness. Kipp didn’t know she would be disrupting carefully laid-out plans.

O’Dell had Kipp play up two age-groups, to the 15s. He didn’t intend on her to play much her first two years, but rather would benefit from practicing against older and talented girls and getting personal attention and extra reps in practice. Instead, halfway through that first season, Kipp was starting.

“I’ve always felt mature and wise for my age,” Kipp said. “I had a perspective on life and the goals that I wanted. I was super serious about high school and club volleyball, but I was scared that my seriousness would get taken the wrong way because everyone else just wanted to have fun. I’m less apologetic about it now. I feel like I’ve become a lot more confident in who I am.

“Now, I’ve found a place, at Stanford, where that’s the norm. And that’s been really cool.”

WHEN VICINI CAME to Newport Beach to live with the Kipps for three months during the pandemic, she wasn’t surprised at what she found.

“I can see where she got her bright energy, why she’s always smiling, why she cares so much about people,” Vicini said. “It’s from her family. They’re the exact same way. They welcomed me in and said I was their fourth daughter. They just have so much love.”

Vicini, from Lexington, Kentucky, first met Kipp with the U.S. youth national team as high school sophomores.

“I was so intimidated by her because she was such an incredible athlete and I wanted to be like her,” Vicini said. “But once we started talking, I just felt she and I could relate on so many levels.

“We always joke because we’re polar opposites in some ways. I like to wake up early, she likes to stay up late. She sips on her coffee, I chug mine. But every little individual thing that we’re opposite on, when it comes down to our core values and our goals, we’re so similar.

“When we came to Stanford, we were both really scared about not finding a place that we fit in. But then we immediately connected. We knew that regardless of how we were going to interact with other people, we had each other and that we were going to be lifelong best friends. It was one of those things we knew immediately.”