STARKVILLE — Penn State was the school that was often on the mind of Khristian Carr when she was a volleyball standout at Starkville High School.
Carr dreamed of taking her emerging talents to Penn State, which at the time was and remains one of the nation’s top volleyball programs.
“It really excited me,” Carr said. “I was really interested and I believed I could do it. I believed I could be looked at by them, as well as other schools.”
As Carr moved closer to college, volleyball remained a priority and her focus shifted. Carr admitted she initially thought she wanted to leave home and go to school somewhere else, but she eventually realized as a junior and as a senior at Starkville High that Mississippi State was a good fit.
“I think it was so good as a younger person to have those expectations, to think so big,” Carr said. “I think that is really good and everyone should have that same type of mind-set and goal.”
Looking back, Carr can smile at the road she has traveled to get to her senior year at MSU. After not playing much in her first two seasons, Carr emerged as a key piece of the MSU attack as a junior. This season, Carr is shifting gears again with a new coach — Julie Darty — and is counting on the perseverance she has displayed in her first three years to help her have a memorable senior campaign.
“Instead of shooting for the stars completely and keeping everyone else out, I kept everyone in and I shot at everything and I was able to land here,” Carr said.
On Sunday, Carr had 10 kills in 29 attacks (.138 hitting percentage) and was one of four players on the White team with double-digit kills in a 3-2 victory against the Maroon team in the squad’s annual preseason scrimmage at the Newell-Grissom Building.
Last season, Carr, a 5-foot-11 outside hitter, had 252 kills, which was third-most on the team. This season, she and transfer Morgan Kath are the only seniors — Taylor Haskins, a Texas Tech transfer, is a graduate student — on a roster that includes seven freshmen in Darty’s first season as head coach in Starkville.
Darty, who was head coach at Jacksonville from 2014-17, said the MSU coaching staff has tried to increase Carr’s volleyball IQ so she can be more efficient with every touch. She said the coaches have laid out standards and expectations for all of the players in an effort to make all of them great. Darty said Carr has taken what has been thrown at her and is relishing the challenge.
“I think it is a testament to her. She has had a very interesting and difficult road here,” Darty said. “She didn’t play last much (in her first two years), and last year she had to face some adversity with some team dynamic stuff. I will be honest, I think she just needed some love and needed to be poured into. I do think half of the battle with her is believing in herself.”
Ann Carr, who is executive senior associate athletic director / Senior Women’s Administrator (SWA) at MSU, said she stressed to her daughter that “nothing comes easy” and that she would have to continue to work hard for everything she wanted. She feels that mantra stuck with Khristian as she stayed at MSU and didn’t run when problems occurred.
“When you stop at something, you have to have had exhausted all possibilities,” Ann Carr said. “Just because you’re not playing when you think you should be playing doesn’t mean you have exhausted all possibilities. I think sometimes kids will equate that to, ‘Well, I have exhausted all of my possibilities, so I am going to go someplace else,’ or ‘We’re not winning as fast as I want to, so I am going to go someplace else.’ When you make a commitment, you need to learn how to stand by that commitment.”
Carr stood by her commitment to MSU even though a new coach — David McFatrich — was hired prior to her freshman season. Carr remained in the program even after she played in only five matches as a freshman and in six matches as a sophomore.
Ann Carr admits her daughter had her ups and her downs in her first two seasons, as well as last season, when MSU finished 10-23 and 1-17 in the Southeastern Conference. Carr was third in total attacks behind Jelena Vujcin and Sara Maddox. Ann Carr feels Khristian has seen the benefits of staying late at practice to polish her craft in hopes of translating that success to the matches.
“By staying later, she is helping herself but she is helping the team,” Ann Carr said. “Maybe in one of those sets she will have the stamina that is needed and she can reach for the ball that will help the team win the step, and that helps them win the match.”
Khristian Carr said the confidence family members and friends showed in her helped her persevere when things were tough. She said she also has believed in herself and worked hard through the good and the bad times. Carr hopes all of the lessons enable her to keep shooting for the stars in her final season as a Bulldog.
“I never gave up,” Carr said. “I kept believing I had the potential. Someone saw it. Someone believed I could do it. Now it only takes me to believe it, me to keep believing it because sometimes it can be hard and rough on that road when you start to kind of lose faith and start to doubt yourself. But I am really happy I have been strong enough to continue believing, and that I had those opportunities and people in my corner and that I do have the skills. I just have to keep working and believing.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.