6:30 AM
A few hours before their final game of the season, the Louisville volleyball team files into their gym. The players are fearless because they have earned the right to be, and at the same time, they are at ease with their fearless attitude because they have kept their perfect season intact. It was never their goal to be perfect. Louisville is a good team.
Between warm-up serves, players are swayed to "No Scrubs" by the band. Her shoulders were raised to the bleachers as she settled in a few feet away from the net. Dilfer sets the ball to one precise spot and then another, after a member of the Louisville staff tosses it. She does this many times. It is boring in the way that greatness can be seen through repetition.
Dilfer's former high school and club coach says she has put in thousands of hours to be able to set the balls the way she does. When Dilfer was in high school, she said she was going to compete for a national title.
Dilfer is a fifth-year senior for the top-ranked Cards. She has been working for years to get this, her last chance, and she spent hours with her coach at a church gym in Northern California.
Dilfer told Anna DeBeer that the Cards could win a national title and that they needed to start talking about it. Dilfer ties a green ribbon to her shoelace before every game to remind her that every moment is precious. The team has become more urgent because of her.
In nine days, Louisville destroyed three top 10 teams. In early November, the Cards became the top ranked team in the nation. They can finish the regular season with a perfect record. Notre Dame is the only one that stands in the way of the NCAA tournament. Louisville has never won a national title, and no team from the Atlantic has. No woman has ever coached a Division I champion.
At the end of the tournament, history will be written. Dilfer dreams about a house that is quiet and dark. She says there's so much that goes into that. It's not enough to dream about it.
When Dilfer transferred to Louisville, she was given the starting job, but she quickly made it impossible for Kelly to keep her off the court.
Dilfer still remembers her first conversation with Busboom Kelly. She entered her name into the transfer portal a few weeks before New Year's Day. Dilfer started in every match of the season as a sophomore. She was ranked in the top 10 for single-season assists and ace per set. She was named All-Big 12 a month before.
Busboom Kelly told Dilfer that they don't need him. We like the group we have.
Busboom Kelly, a former captain at Nebraska and a libero who helped the Cornhuskers win two NCAA finals and a national title in her four years there, wasn't sure if we wanted another setter on our roster. She believes in a program that is built on trust and transparency. Busboom Kelly said she wasn't pleased about a lot when she was asked what she was most pleased about after the Notre Dame game.
Busboom Kelly told Dilfer that he had to be OK with one of three things happening: Dilfer could be the show's leader, the show's setter, or both. The team could run a 6-2 offense, but it would require splitting playing time with another setter. She could be beaten out.
Dilfer says that she gave him a perspective of "Woah, that's a program I want to be part of."
The team used a 6-2 rotation for the first part of the year after Dilfer transferred. This was new. Dilfer was the team's primary setter. She was the only player on the Vision Volleyball Club team.
"I've never had another team in the history of coaching club where I didn't have two setters," says Whitmill. "Except for when I had my daughter." No one wants to play with you, but she was that good, so it was because of that. The next 20 setters in the Los Gatos, California, area chose to play for a team where they might get to play and be seen by college coaches.
She was playing with a freshman who had been named Arizona's Player of the year and a two-time PrepVolleyball All-American.
Busboom Kelly says they knew she had something special when Dilfer came here. Where does she fit?
Dilfer's parents would check in with their second daughter often. Is this what you want?
"Wherever we would bring up anything with her, she was like, 'I'm fine, Mom and Dad.' I have this. "I know what I'm doing." She was always sure it was the right choice.
By the time the NCAA tournament began, Dilfer had become the team's principal setter. The freshman Dilfer had been splitting time with another person. Dilfer says that Louisville was always where she was supposed to be even if she had a backup. She calls it a leap of faith.
After her first semester at Louisville, she got a tattoo on her right arm. It reads "dry bones awaken." It's from the Bible. Dilfer says that God wakes up dry bones. It was an answer to a prayer when I came to Louisville.
Before every match, Delightful Pruys. She ties a green ribbon to her shoelace when she puts on her left knee pad. She was 4 years old when her brother died of a heart disease. He was young. His favorite color was green.
Dilfer says that he feels closest to him at that moment. "It's a time where I center myself, and ground myself on the fact that I'm not going out there just to compete, just to do it." There is a bigger purpose in why I am doing this.
Dilfer's recollections of Trevin are mostly outlines, filled with family photos and stories she's been told. He broke his arm when he jumped off the playground set outside of their house, yelling "Trevin to the rescue!" like a superhero would. When the sisters argued, Trevin was their peacemaker. Dilfer can't help but do the same thing when she sees pennies. She has a tattoo on her wrist.
She knows that the grief doesn't loosen up. Sometimes she can talk about Trevin without crying, and other times she can't.
Dilfer says that he would think that the feeling would fade over time. I think it's grown at times because I'm able to think about it and see how much it affects people.
In high school, it was difficult to not look at the boys in the grade above and wonder what they would be like. Ribs and root beer were his favorites, but would they still be his favorites? It was easy to see that he was good at whatever he did.
She says that losing someone you love is a constant reminder that life can be short. I have more gratitude for what this game has done for me because of that perspective.
Dilfer was surrounded by her parents and sisters as she celebrated senior day and the perfect regular season.
Dilfer's aunt showed her how to shape her hands around a volleyball and set it against the wall of the family vacation home after she died. She started going to the weekly training sessions when she was 12.
She would come all dressed up. "And he would say, 'No, you're here to teach me.' She's here to shag. It was just an hour standing by a pole catching set.
"I would try to hit the ball to myself, or throw it to myself if I wanted to, if she was getting water," says the woman. I was trying to get Ron's attention and say, "Hey, I'm pretty good."
Dilfer thinks she did this for a long time. She played volleyball at Notre Dame and then at Pepperdine. The youngest Dilfer sister just finished her freshman season. Three of them are Setters.
Nobody in the Dilfer house likes losing a lot. "They didn't take it easy on us," says Maddie. Trent Dilfer was a quarterback for 14 seasons in the National Football League, leading the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl ring after the 2000 season. The two met at a swimming pool.
Family board games were a nightmare. Cornhole and half-court basketball were considered minor improvements if they were only outside. And Easter egg hunts? "If she didn't get the money egg, she would be angry," she says.
The summer before Tori was a high school freshman at Valley Christian in San Jose, California, she and her friends signed up for a beach volleyball tournament. They ran a trial run to see if they could play together at Valley Christian.
"They didn't get along well," she says. They went at each other all the time.
"We got better as the day went on," she said. She thinks they won second place, but she doesn't know.
"From a parent's perspective, it was just like, 'Oh gosh, this is awful,'" says Cassandra. She wondered if her kids were being healthy. They can be very competitive.
Trent said the girls would be fine. "Now they're best friends and support each other more than anyone else," she says. I was nervous about it for a long time.
"Tori is not a potato." Karch Kiraly.
All three sisters were coached byWhitmill at various points. He tells his players stories about Tori. Dilfer missed three consecutive serves in a drill, and the team made a joke about calling him "Dilfer" from that point on.
She ended up being one of the best server on the team by the end of the year, because she was so angry. That's the type of child she is. Pulling a "Dilfer" is a term his teams still use.
The stories he tells are his favorites because they show the type of person he wants his players to be.
Things were going south during Dilfer's senior season at Valley Christian. The Warriors were average in a crushing conference after winning state the previous year. Dilfer was frustrated and it showed on the court.
After the game, Trent apologized for his daughter's behavior, but the coach thought the team would address it the next day, talk about teamwork and leadership.
Dilfer stood in front of the team and apologized. She said that she had been selfish all season and now that was going to change.
Our season turned around after that point. All her teammates were behind her. Valley Christian went back to the state finals a few weeks later.
Louisville hit a.303 clip with Dilfer distributing the ball, which was the best in the conference and ranked fourth nationally. Anna Stevenson says that she feeds confidence into them.
Dilfer is the leader of the offense and uses the second contact to put her hitters in position to score. Sometimes the sets are blind, demanding she trust that Louisville's hitters will be at the right place at the right time, all of which needs to be executed in a few seconds or less.
Anna Stevenson is a fifth-year middle blocker. She'll hang the ball if I'm late. She has a good sense of what I need.
Karch Kiraly, the U.S. women's national team coach, likes a quote from volleyball legend Mike Hebert. It is difficult to play with a potato as a Setter for a full season.
Kiraly says that it means you can't just have bland, quiet, nothing as a setter. You need a person who is strong, poised and consistent. There is no potato.
She is a two-time Setter of the Year.
Kiraly remembers watching Louisville play against Pittsburgh earlier in the season, and he points to her body language during a crucial set. She looked like a leader.
Kiraly says that she never waved a white flag. There are a lot of little things that explain why the people around her seem to like her more and more.
Dilfer has directed Louisville to be the fourth-best hitting percentage in the country.
Stevenson says that if he hit a ball out of bounds or a block, she would find him on the ball. She gives us confidence.
Busboom Kelly has worked with Dilfer. Busboom Kelly knew that Dilfer could be a great leader when they first met. Busboom Kelly challenged Dilfer to be even better because she knew it when she saw it.
"She had to grind through moments of, 'This is what my natural instinct is, and here I'm learning a new way of doing it,'" associate head coach Dan Meske says."
Dilfer and Busboom Kelly reviewed film in one-on-one sessions, and the coach pointed out moments in games where Dilfer's body language may have betrayed her. Busboom Kelly says that she could see it on her face and body language. She tried to be that tough coach on the floor but realized that wasn't going to work with this team.
She was showing her entire hand because her emotions were a deck of cards.
Dilfer says that she challenged him to be aware of his body language and use it in a way that encourages others and himself.
Dilfer spent hours studying film so she could adjust her body language on the court.
Louisville defeated Notre Dame in the regular season finale to finish with a perfect 28-0 record. Busboom Kelly divides the season into three parts, the preseason, regular season and playoffs, and she emphasizes that having an undepolozed record doesn't mean anything in the final part. The players are given scissors to cut the net after the team celebrates with a trophy.
They struggled early and lost the first set four times during the regular season. They won 20 out of 28.
"We've had matches where we're down, or we lose a set and you just look at the huddle and you know what's coming, because we know what's coming," Meske says.
In their first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, the Cards swept Illinois-Chicago and Ball State. The 16th-seeded Florida is on Thursday. Mary Wise is the only woman who has ever coached in a national title game.
Penn State won back-to-back national titles in 2008 and 2005, the last time a team was perfect. Nebraska won the whole thing in 2000.
John Cook says it's brutal. You can't mess it up because you feel like you've got this great accomplishment. You don't want to get your new car dirty, like you have a brand new car.
Louisville had a brand new car. They decided to burn it.
Busboom Kelly took the team outside. The captains were given three sheets of paper with rankings. The director of volleyball operations gave the lighter and they burned the rankings in a bucket.
Stevenson says it was like a carry-my-lunch bucket. The team watched the rankings burn.
The ragged notecard that Meske has been holding onto since Dilfer left it on his desk was safe from the fire. Dilfer wrote a line from the book on the notecard while they were discussing it.
The scouting report is in Meske's pocket before every game. He leaves it on the bench for the team to see. Sometimes he looks at it.
Something great is about to happen, it says. Dilfer said the word great.
