STARKVILLE — Numbers don’t mean a lot to Payton Harris.
After all, it’s not like she has time to stand straight up and keep tabs on her defensive success. If Harris did, she likely would get caught out of position, or, more embarrassingly, get six-packed, a volleyball term that refers to someone getting plunked in the head with a kill.
But that usually never happens to Harris, a 5-foot-5 libero/defensive specialist, because she has an uncanny knack for keeping balls off the ground and rallies alive so the Mississippi State volleyball team can score a point.
“Sometimes I think she naturally does it, but watching Payton you will know when it is easy,” MSU senior middle blocker/right-side hitter Jazmyne Johnson said. “It is like her shoulders relax and it is the way she steps to the ball. Maybe that is because I am a person of detail and I am always on her. Other times, she is sprawling all over the floor and I know that was a hard ball.”
Harris’ ability to dig even the fastest kill attempts earned her the nickname “Pay Day” from Johnson. On Saturday, Harris, Johnson, and the rest of the MSU volleyball team will return to the court to begin preparations for the 2016 season. The season will begin at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26, with a match against Kansas, a nationalist semifinalist in 2015, in the first day of the two-day, four-team Bulldog Invitational at the Newell-Grissom Building.
The tournament will be a great test for MSU, which finished 17-15 last season under David McFatrich, who was in his first season as head coach at the school. The finish was MSU’s first winning season since 2006.
Harris played an integral role in the success, leading the Bulldogs with 434 digs. She also earned Academic All-Southeastern Conference honors.
Harris was even better in 2014, earning honorable mention American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) All-America honors after setting a school record with 735 digs. She also set the SEC record with 59 digs in a match against Northwestern State on Sept. 13, 2014. Her performance helped her earn AVCA All-Region honors and a spot on the SEC’s All-Freshman team.
McFatrich said “good vision” helps Harris be such a presence on defense. He said “great players look at the right thing a little longer than good players.” He said it also helps Harris has the mind-set of a lockdown cornerback who doesn’t want to get beat anywhere on the football field.
“Most great liberos have very good technique,” McFatrich said. “The greatest ones have made a choice, a decision of the will to be tenacious on defense and chase every ball. Payton has made that choice.
“More important than the digging, however, is passing. For us to be a great team, we have to be a great passing and serving team, and that starts with our libero. Payton has worked hard to become a great passer.”
That process started to come together for Harris at Cy-Fair High School in Cypress, Texas, which is near Houston. As a junior, she broke the school’s digs record with 710. She eclipsed that mark as a senior with 818.
“I never really counted,” Harris said. “It just kind of happened by the end of the season. It’s not like you go through the season counting them, but by the end of the season someone was like, ‘Oh yeah, you just broke the record.’ The next year they are like, ‘Oh, you broke your record again.’ Well, that was weird.”
Harris experienced that same feeling as a freshman at MSU with her record-breaking season. She said she didn’t try to set single-game or single-season marks and that she was playing where coaches put her and trying her best to read and to react in an instant to help her team score a point.
It just so happened Harris was in the right place and reacted quickly a majority of the time.
“It is a lot of blocking and where the block is and where the coaches put me because they choose if I am at left back or middle back depending on the team we play,” Harris said. “Over the years, you get this ability to read the court in a different way. I think all really good liberos are able to do. It is not anticipating but a feel and you react really well to it.”
Harris admits she sometimes wonders how she keeps balls off the ground. She smiles, though, because she doesn’t want to attribute all of her success to luck. Instead, she prefers to rely on years of hard work and training that have taught her how to combine vision, an ability to read the game, footwork, and reactions into a defensive game plan that frustrates some of the SEC’s top hitters.
“It is honing your skills and honing your abilities over the years,” Harris said. “At a point, everyone feels like it is natural. When you start, no, it isn’t natural. Now, I go and dive for a ball and it is the most natural thing in the world. People will ask, ‘How do you even do that?’ I am like, ‘I don’t know.’ I think it is honing everything and it all cohesively works together.
“I am OK. I go out there and try to do the best I can for my team. If that calls for me getting a ton of digs, that is what I have to do to let them put the ball away.”
That sounds like someone who doesn’t care about numbers, especially the crooked one in the digs column under the name of Harris.
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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