Brooke Moore won’t be remembered as Austin Peay’s most athletic volleyball player.
She won’t be recognized as the tallest, quickest or even the strongest hitter in the history of the program. But the graduate student from Louisville has outsmarted her competition to become one of the university’s greatest.
With a shove of the ball on the left side, Moore set the school record for kills on Sunday, Nov. 7.
“If it’s close and up high in the net, I’m going to push it back to where the other team’s not ready for it,” she said.
“I’m not the biggest or the tallest player and can’t jump as high as everyone else, so all my life I’ve just had to learn to find ways to get the ball to the ground, whether it’s a big kill off the hand or a tip. A lot of my training has just been finding a way to get the ball to the ground no matter what.”
Moore finished with 15 kills against UT Martin on Saturday and had 25 in the two-game series. She started the season with the eighth-most kills in program history and is on pace to set a new career high by the end of the year.
The Governors (19-9) entered the game after a five-set comeback against the Skyhawks the night before. Moore tallied two kills on 12 attempts in the first set on Sunday, but she picked it up in the second to set the mark.
“It’s very crazy,” Moore said. “It’s a crazy moment right now. I do, obviously, want to give a big shoutout to all of my former and current teammates and coaches who definitely have helped me get here. Without them, I wouldn’t even be close to this, so I definitely give a lot of credit to them.”
Moore was recognized as one of the team’s two “super seniors” this weekend. Sunday’s match was her final home game, barring the school’s clinching of the top seed in the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.
“She’s so smart,” said head coach Taylor Mott. “She knows the game. A lot of athletes react to the game; she watches the game and sees what’s happening so she can make adjustments. Whereas if you watch the ball, a lot of the time you don’t see the game.
“She’s just really set the bar so high as far as what it looks like to be a student-athlete, and she’s just so good. … She continues to shock people and she’s been here five years.”
APSU plays at Mu**ay State and Eastern Illinois to close out the regular season. The Govs currently sit in second place in the OVC.
