photo by: Missy Minear/Kansas Athletics

Middle blocker Zoey Burgess of the Kansas Jayhawks during practice at Horejsi Family Athletics Center in Lawrence on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024.

Zoey Burgess had a conversation with her mother in early August in which she said one of her goals for the upcoming season was to win Big 12 freshman of the year.

Imagine her surprise to learn, a few days later, that she had already earned the preseason edition of that award — something she did not previously know existed.

“It was a super, super cool feeling,” Burgess said. “… Just to get that preseason freshman of the year was really inspiring to me, I guess.”

The recognition singled out the young Burgess as a player to watch for this year’s otherwise veteran-heavy Kansas volleyball team — if she hadn’t already earned that distinction on the strength of her title of 2024 Gatorade Utah Volleyball Player of the Year.

In her senior year at Lone Peak High School, the 6-foot-4 middle blocker from Alpine, Utah, who has played with the USA Volleyball National Team Development Program, totaled 279 kills on a .419 hitting percentage and added 65 blocks.

The KU volleyball staff had identified Burgess as one of the best players in the country at her position and set about recruiting her, led by Associate Head Coach Billy Ebel.

“We brought her in and she connected with, I think, what was going on in Lawrence, Kansas, and our team and our staff,” head coach Ray Bechard said. “She’s a unique kid in that she loves to be around people and she loves to play volleyball at a high level and we really were drawn to that.”

Burgess, who comes from a family of Utah athletes — her father played college basketball at Duke and Utah and now coaches at BYU, her mother played soccer at Utah and her older sister recently transferred from Utah to Oklahoma for volleyball — didn’t know much about KU before the recruitment began, but didn’t take long at all to get sold on the team.

“When you’re on campus, there’s just such a family feeling to the team and with the coaching staff, and it really just makes you feel at home,” she said, “So that was one of the biggest things for me, coming away from home — obviously I’m not from Kansas — was just knowing I’ll have a family here. And that’s exactly what being at KU has brought to me.”

With the Big 12’s expanding footprint, though, she’ll get more opportunities to play back in Utah than past Jayhawks, now that both Utah and BYU are in the conference.

“Obviously, that’s the environment I grew up around,” Burgess said. “And so I’m just so excited to play them because I had friends that I played with that now play at those two schools.”

Burgess is what Bechard called “the wave of the future” for the KU volleyball program, as it enters the final season for key players like Caroline Bien, London Davis, Ayah Elnady, Toyosi Onabanjo and Camryn Turner.

Onabanjo has formed a particular attachment to Burgess.

“I feel like we’ve all kind of adopted one of (the freshmen), like as our children,” she said. “I personally adopted Zoey as my child just because she’s in my position … I see a lot of myself in her when I was younger, so I feel like they’re all just amazing people, and as seniors I feel like we’ve kind of taken it as our responsibility just to put them under our wings and just making sure everything’s OK with them.”

Burgess said Onabanjo’s support on and off the court was a great help as she arrived early.

“She’s made so much growth since she’s gotten here in January,” Onabanjo said, “and she’s going to continue to grow as a player and I’m just super excited to see where she ends up.”

photo by: Aiden Droge/Kansas Athletics

Middle blocker Zoey Burgess of the Kansas Jayhawks during photo day on Monday, July 22, 2024, in Lawrence.