Lawrence High School senior volleyball player Taylor Tolfree has helped lead the Lions to the state tournament this season.

Lawrence High School senior volleyball player Taylor Tolfree has helped lead the Lions to the state tournament this season.

As the curtain began to drop on Tayler Tolefree’s volleyball career at Lawrence High, the whispers roared louder.

“Poor Tayler, it’s too bad she didn’t go out with a better team,” they said.

“Tayler’s such a great kid and has had such a great career,” they added. “She deserves better than to close her senior season on a team like this.”

“Oh, if only Tayler was on a team that knew how to use her.”

That’s what the whispers said.

But not once did such thoughts enter Tolefree’s mind. After all, if Tolefree was serious about her role as team captain, senior leader and top all-around player – and she was from Day 1 – there was not time to worry about things she could not control. She had enough on her plate just trying to lead her team. She did not have time to feel sorry for herself.

Not that she would have anyway. Tolefree’s not wired that way. In the darkest moments, she sees light. After the toughest losses, she looks ahead, not worrying about the wreckage behind.

“When you play three teams in a night and you lose to the first two, it’s hard to get back up and give it all you’ve got against that third team,” Tolefree said. “We had plenty of struggles this season. We had practices where we struggled and we had games where we struggled. But because we’re all so close, because we’re friends away from volleyball, we stuck with it.”

And so, night after night, Tolefree hit the court and went about her business. She bombed kills on offense and set up monster blocks on defense. She even expanded her game to become a better back-row player and a more dangerous server. It didn’t matter that she was an all-state selection as a junior in 2007. It didn’t matter that three of the players in the Lions’ regular rotation were sophomores. Tolefree wanted no special treatment. She was nothing more than another member of a team. If it took her until the end of the season, even if it never happened at all, she was going to work tirelessly to be the ultimate team player.

It’s because of that, that a simple blink along the way might have caused you to missed Tolefree’s standout career.

“What makes her look so quiet is that she does put the team above herself,” LHS coach Stephanie Magnuson said. “I’ve been trying to get her to celebrate herself all year, but she believes in her team and she has high expectations for herself and her teammates.”

As a result, after a roller coaster season, the rest of Tolefree’s teammates rose to her level, the level that earned her a Division I scholarship to Kansas University, the level that earned LHS a trip to state.

For Tolefree, sticking with her team – as young as they were – was a no-brainer. After all, a previous group of LHS seniors had stuck with her when she was a sophomore and, now, as she prepares to open play on her second run at state on Friday, Tolefree has nothing but fond memories of her time at LHS.

“It was easy to do,” Tolefree said. “Because I was a sophomore in that position once, too. I remember what it was like. It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, don’t make the seniors mad.’ The bottom line for me was that I just wanted to play with girls who showed up to practice ready to work hard and ready to make the same commitment that I was making.”

Even during the down days, Tolefree saw the dedication. That’s what helped her hold on to the belief that her senior season could be special. Despite heading into the state tournament with a 9-26 record, that’s exactly the case. As they say, the records get wiped out when the state tournament arrives and any team that qualifies has a chance to win.

“We joke about it,” Tolefree said. “We’ve talked about making T-Shirts that have our record on them and then the words ‘Sub-state champions.'”

Tolefree admits that, as a sophomore, she had no idea what sub-state was all about and was not in a position to truly appreciate her team’s trip to state. That’s not the case today.

“At the beginning of the season, state was such a long way away and we had a lot of work to do before then,” Tolefree said. “But now that we’re there, now that we’ve worked hard and have earned it, we do appreciate it.”

The satisfaction felt by the team for its accomplishment pales in comparison to the appreciation LHS has for Tolefree and the effort she put in to return the program back to the heights it enjoyed under Joan Wells. Magnuson, who played at LHS during the mid-1990s and watched so many Lawrence High legends throughout her childhood, said Tolefree deserves mention in the same breath as any of them.

“Definitely,” Magnuson said. “What puts her up there with those people, if not above them, is the all-around person she is.”

Modest as ever, Tolefree blushed when the topic turned to the legacy she’s leaving behind.

“It’s really nice to know that at the end of the day, I did my part to help represent Lawrence High volleyball the right way,” Tolefree said. “I couldn’t be happier that I helped add to the great volleyball tradition we have here.”