Sisters Michaela, Madison Keyes compete for Tech...in two different sports

Editor's note: Madison Keyes and the Golden Eagle volleyball team head to the OVC Tournament this week in Murray, Ky. It's a good time to run the story on TTUsports.com about Madison and her sister, Michaela, that was the cover story on our most recent edition of unlimited, the official online magazine of Tennessee Tech Athletics. Click here to go to the unlimited page.

By Rob Schabert, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Information

They claim there isn’t any competition between them, these two Cincinnati sisters, and that assertion appears authentic during casual conversations and everyday enterprises.

Yeah, right.
   
A college volleyball player and a college soccer player, three years apart and the fruit of the same loving family, their claim is mostly true. However, a sporting, killer instinct bubbles just under the surface. One seemingly simple, innocent question unleashes their scrappiness.   

We asked: Which of you plays the better sport?

VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: I do.
SOCCER PLAYER: Are you serious? I do.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Volleyball is the greatest combination of skill and athleticism.
SOCCER PLAYER: Volleyball? Volleyball?
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Yes. I’m just saying. It uses every part of your body (holding her arms out to her sides,
      limp, to signifying their non-use in soccer).
SOCCER PLAYER: When you’re getting bumped off the ball you use your arms. No, soccer is far superior to
      volleyball. We play through weather conditions. We literally run seven to nine miles every day.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: So, we’re smart enough to play inside and not out in the weather.
SOCCER PLAYER: There is no contact in volleyball. In soccer, you’re getting slammed off the ball.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: The only thing we agree on is that I would die if I played her sport, and she would die
      if she played my sport. If she jumped for three hours…
SOCCER PLAYER: I’d play libero! And you’d sit in the back. You wouldn’t run. You’d be the goalkeeper.
VOLLEYBALL PLAYER: Soccer, anybody can go kick a ball around. In volleyball, not just anybody can play.
     You have to have some skill to keep the ball in the air.

Got it from dad

Madison Keyes is a senior member of the Tennessee Tech volleyball team. Her sister Michaella, three years her junior, is a true freshman member of the Golden Eagle soccer team. They are two of three daughters born to Wendy and Michael Keyes of Cincinnati.
   
The third sister, Macey, is attend Sycamore High School where she is a freshman on the Aviator’s volleyball team.
   
“She’s actually pretty good,” admits Madison, who shares the sport with her youngest sister.
   
Three young women, all competing in sports. Clearly from an athletic family, right?
   
Not necessarily.
   
“Mom played softball in high school,” says Michaella.
   
“But it wasn’t anything real serious,” adds Madison
      
“We got it mainly from our dad,” says Michaella.
   
“Mom isn’t really the athletic type. She’s more like a Barbie Doll. She’s ‘princess-y.’  She doesn’t want to get dirty or sweaty.”
   
Mom doesn’t disagree.
   
“It’s a good description,” says Wendy. “I didn’t play sports in high school. I didn’t really have the opportunity to play.”
   
It was Wendy and Michael who got the girls started in sports, enrolling them in gymnastics, swimming and other activities at the YMCA when they were very young. The family has always nurtured a sports-heavy lifestyle.
   
“We’re all big sports fans. The Bengals and the Reds. We like them a lot,” says Madison. “My dad has finished our basement and set it up like a sports lounge. It’s awesome, really. We have all kinds of sports-related stuff down there. There’s a big, neon Bengals sign.”

It’s in the blood

The love of sports isn’t the only trait that was nurtured by their family. Both are majoring in nursing at Tech, a career path that is also in the family history. Wendy is a nurse in a women’s health field, and their maternal grandmother was also in nursing.
      
“In the end, I want to be a family nurse practitioner, so that will take some extra school,” says Madison. “I think eventually I’ll need my master’s.”
     
And majoring in nursing is no small task, keeping her away from volleyball quite often in her senior season.
   
“The workload is tremendous,” says TTU volleyball coach Dave Zelenock. “It’s very challenging for her to find time to eat, sleep, practice , study, and she has had to make concessions.
      
“She flat out does not practice at all on Thursdays because of clinicals and Thursday is a big ‘live day’ for us. It’s been really tough on her. She has to get it done on film, and doesn’t have a chance to do some of those things in practice. She has to ‘think’ it in preparations for our next opponent,” Zelenock explained.
     
That heavy workload hasn’t slowed her or caused a letdown.
   
“I have never heard her complain,” Zelenock says. “She accepts that the next couple months will be a real grind, and then it will get a little better when volleyball is finished. She wanted to be a nurse, and she also wanted to be a volleyball player. It was her decision, and she’s making it work.”
   
Madison admits that it’s a burden.
      
“The goal right now is just to get through this semester, because it’s really kicking my butt,” she says. “I’ve finally adjusted to everything, but I’m telling you, at the beginning of the semester I thought I was going to have a panic attack. “
   
Having her little sister living with her was a huge plus.
   
“She did have a panic attack a couple of times,” Michaella says.  
   
“I would wake up crying, and I was worried that I was late for class, and Michaella was there. She would say to me, ‘it’s like two in the morning and you’re fine.’ I always felt like I was trying to catch my breath and get caught up on everything. I mean it just hit me. Nursing was crazy.”
   
In her fourth year on campus, Madison started upper division nursing courses last semester and this fall is in clinicals, and she feels like she has things under control despite the pressures and time-crushing schedules.
   
“Now I feel like I’ve got in under control. I’ve adjusted well. My clinicals are almost done. I just had to figure how to manage my time.”

Family ties

With both girls playing high school and club sports, and Macey not too many years behind, it put the family to the test in trying to follow and support each of them.
     
“It was absolutely crazy, especially before I started driving,” says Madison. “There was a lot of planning to do, because we also had our younger sister playing, too. You have to be careful about giving too much attention to anyone, especially with girls.”
   
All of that travel didn’t keep anyone from participating.
      
“They wanted us involved in stuff, so there was never anyone saying, ‘oh, you can’t make it’ to something. ” They found a way to get us where we needed to be, even if it meant them taking time off. I can’t thank my parents enough for all the stuff they did. We stressed them out with all that. It’s just incredible how they made it all work.”
   
“It was tough. We just juggled things,” explains Wendy. “There were many times they were playing in different cities. We’d just figure out how we were going to manage where we were going to be.”
   
Many times the family was forced to split up and go in different directions to follow the daughters.
   
Having two sisters at the same college will help reduce travel from the pinball-like bouncing around from site to site.
   
“They come to a lot of games, especially since it’s my senior year and especially when we both have big home games,” Madison says. “They make it to a lot of games, but if they do stay at home, they watch the webstream of it, and they connect it to the big screen TV in our basement. They have people over, make food and they dress up our dog with a jersey.

Great Eights

And, of course the dog’s jersey bears the number “8” just like both Keyes’ Golden Eagle game jerseys (left). That, however, was not planned.
    
“Actually, Michaella requested a different number. They just happened to give her eight,” Madison says.
   
“I really wanted number five,” says Michaella. “Number five has been my number for the longest time.”
   
Madison tried to go in a different direction.
   
“When I started playing volleyball, they asked what number I wanted and I chose 58 because she was five and I was eight at the time. But nobody’s 58 in volleyball, so I just took the 8. My big numbers were 13, 36, and five. I guess eight was all that was left.”
   
And Macey requested the number eight for her high school volleyball jersey, and wears it proudly in tribute to her older sisters.

Different roads

So, exactly how did two seemingly close sisters end up playing two distinctly different sports in college?
   
“I actually started playing volleyball because I got cut from the soccer team,” admits Madison. “I got cut from the team in seventh grade. I wanted to stay active, so I started running cross country in high school. The next fall, I saw girls going into the gym wearing knee pads, and I checked into that, and I thought maybe I’d try out for volleyball.
   
“I literally tried out for volleyball with absolutely no experience,” she admits.
   
“She couldn’t even serve a ball overhand over the net when she went to tryout,” says Michaella.
   
Madison was the last person added to the eighth grade team. The next year, there was a new coach at the helm. According to Madison, the new coach was “really intense.”
   
“If you can’t serve a ball, you’re cut right there,” he told the hopefuls. “I was in trouble.”
   
Enter Kristen Hammergren, the neighbor who lived across the street. She was four years older than Madison and had just gotten a full scholarship offer to play volleyball in Pittsburgh for Duquesne University.
   
“She took me to the high school gym and taught me how to serve,” Madison recalls. “The day of tryouts I made two serves over the net, and I made the team. It was enough to get me on the team, but I knew for the next two years if I wanted to keep playing, I needed to get better, so I played club, I took private lessons, and I really improved a lot my sophomore and junior years.”
   
During her junior season at Sycamore, she followed the lead of other players on her team who were making recruiting videos in hopes of gaining the attention of college coaches.
   
“My teammates questioned why I would make one, but I went ahead and did,” she says, and sent it out to several schools.
   
She was talking with coaches at Wright State, IUPUI and Evansville, among others, and (then TTU coach) John Blair sent a letter asking her to visit Cookeville.
   
“On my visit, he offered me a scholarship and I just knew it was the right place. I really liked the campus, the girls on the team were really nice, and I had always wanted to go south. I hate the cold and the weather in Cincinnati.  So, I accepted the offer and came to Tech.”

The second sister

Michaella’s journey to Tech took a slightly different route, and because of a serious injury in her senior season, almost didn’t happen.
   
During her freshman year in high school, she played “down” a level for the U15 club team in her area.
   
“Then, in my sophomore year, I decided I wanted to play in college, so I moved ‘up’ a level. I went from U15 to U17, and I skipped U16. That’s when I really decided. I was talking to some schools, and talking to the coach at Tech (former coach Daniel Brizard).
   
Once she made the decision to attend Tech, Madison played a key role.
   
“Her being here really influenced me,” Michaella says. “We decided that since I was also going into nursing, we should just live together.”
   
The living arrangement not only saved money, but it made it convenient for their parents to have them both at one school.   
   
But, wait, we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves.
    
Michaella secured a position on the highest level club team in the area, but halfway through her senior high school season, she suffered an injury, tearing her ACL and was forced to miss the remainder of her final season and a full season of club. The injury happened in October, and she didn’t delay the start of rehab.
   
“She worked really hard in rehab,” recalls Madison. “She was going three days a week, trying to get ready to come here. She was really pushing it, doing rehab and also doing even  more on her own.”
      
With the injury coming in October, and signing day not scheduled until the spring, Michaella was determined to be ready to go when the time came. She decided to commit to Tennessee Tech, but had to tell Brizard that she had torn her ACL. She was worried he wouldn’t want her anymore.
   
They talked about it, and he told her to come anyway.
   
“You know what? Let’s go,” is what Michaella recalls of the conversation with Brizard. “Let’s just see what you’ve got.”
    
“He told me that he had other girls who had those types of injuries in the past, and wanted me to have the opportunity to give it a try,” she says.  
   
About a week later, Tech made a coaching change as Brizard stepped down and administration began a national search for a new head coach.
   
All through the next couple months of rehab, Tech was really supportive of me in everything,” she says, beginning with assistant coach Corey Boyd and continuing when Steve Springthorpe was named head coach.
   
“They told me ‘just get back, get back into it.’ They would call me every week and ask about how rehab was going, how running was going, and how I felt. They were cool.”
   
Once she arrived on campus, her season was almost derailed as it pulled out of the station. On the second day of practice, while running the stairs of the stadium, she slipped and fell and suffered an injury close to her recently healed ACL. She missed a week of practice while recovering from that injury.
   
Still, she has brought several intangibles to the team, according to her coach.
   
“She has shown a really good character in her role,” Springthorpe says. “She has been really accepting of her role and she is working very hard to improve. She challenges our other players when she’s on the second squad. Against our top 11, she makes it hard on the defensive team. She’s attentive, and she does everything expected of her from a coaching perspective.”

What does it mean

Playing a sport is important to each of the sisters.
      
“Playing soccer means everything to me,” says Michaella, who is in the Honors program at Tech. “That’s what I identify myself with. When I go to introduce myself, I say ‘Hi, I’m Michaella, I play soccer,’ because I’ve done it all my life, year-round.”
    
For Madison, the dedication required to compete in sports has also defined many aspects of her.
   
“Volleyball represents a lot of hard work and determination. I like setting a goal and saying this is what I want to do. Volleyball has taught me a lot of things, and made me a better person in so many ways. From all the people I’ve met, to time management, to leadership. It’s helped in knowing how to communicate with people, to work things out, to being a team player. It’s taken a lot for me to get to where I am.”
     
And many of those traits are clearly seen by volleyball coach Dave Zelenock.
   
“She has done a really good job of learning what works with each of her teammates and adjusting to that,” he says. “She’s shown great maturity.  She has really grown in the two years I’ve known her. She has become more accepting and tolerant of the different personalities in her teammates. She’s there for them to help them get the very best out of each of themselves.”
     
Not only are they playing sports they love, but doing so on the Division I level in college. That, too, means much to them.
   
“To be able to get an education while playing as a college student-athlete, that’s an opportunity that a lot of people will never have,” Madison reflects. “I really appreciate the opportunity I’ve had. I never really thought about it, but when I see the reaction of people when they learn I’m a student-athlete, I realize how hard it has been.”
   
For Michaella, even though she has only just embarked on a career as a collegiate student-athlete, the immensity of it has already sunk in.
   
“High school was one thing, and club was pretty serious, but this is a whole other level of commitment,” she says. “It’s so much more. It takes so much more.”

Name Game

Madison and Michaella share more than a common uniform number and apartment address.  Each of them (and sister Macey, as well) has Aleen as a middle name. It’s a name that has been passed down in the family. It was the middle name of their grandmother, Wendy’s mom.
   
Madison Aleen E. Keyes also has the initial ‘E’ in her title. It stands for her great grandmother, Eleanor.
   
“She died right before I was born, so they gave me her name,” she explains.
   
Michaella Aleen C. Keyes got the initial ‘C’ which stands for Claudette. She was supposed to be a boy, according to her elder sister, named for their father, Michael Claude. So, they turned it into Michealla Claudette.
   
The youngest is Macey Aleen N. Keyes. The ‘N’ is for Nanette, which was Mike’s mom’s name.

It’s getting better

Both sisters play on teams that are striving to rebuild to championship levels, and each sees progress within her team.
   
“I think the soccer team is growing better and better,” says Michaella. “I see it in the mentality about the team, about what we say about our own team. When people might criticize or say something negative, we don’t go along with it. It’s a whole new mindset.”
   
She says there’s a sincere camaraderie within the team.
   
“It’s really good. Everyone is friends,” she says. “Everybody includes each other. On the field, if we’re having a bad day, there’s always somebody to pick you up.
   
“We just have to to be patient. It’s a whole new coaching staff, a whole new style of doing everything. It’s working. We’re getting back. We can see it building every practice, every game. We are all totally dedicated to getting better.”
   
That’s the assessment of a squad under a first-year coach (Springthorpe). The appraisal by Madison of the volleyball team under a second-year coach (Zelenock) is also positive.
   
“We’re really focused on what we need to get done. We’re all very serious about getting better. When you have 14 girls, you have a lot of drama and stuff, but I don’t think there’s any conflicts within this team.”
   
She said the squad is moving forward.
   
“We’ve lost a lot of games, and we’ve been through a lot. Losing is never easy. You get a lot of people blaming other people. But I think we’ve been tough and stuck through it, and we’ve continued to work hard. We’ve put in the work to rebuild the program, and I feel we’re getting things going. We’re starting to win more now,  and when the team wins more in years to come we’ll feel like we contributed to that rebuilding. We know how much we’ve been through, and we can take pride in knowing we toughed it out.”
   
It was something the players on the squad began to sense a year ago, when matches were marked with many close losses.
   
“We could definitely feel we were getting closer. We had good team chemistry and we could see it in our skill sets. We’re just now realizing what it takes to win. Last year we began the transition, and this year we’re putting it to work and starting to win those close games.”

Any advice?

As the younger of the pair, Michaella doesn’t have many opportunities to offer advice.
   
“It’s just like when she’s having her little breakdowns with so much going on, I just tell her, ‘calm down, it will be over in a couple weeks.’ She won’t have to deal with volleyball and nursing at the same time. I help her calm down. I have four more years of this, but she’s almost finished.”
   
Madison, on the other hand, can dish out plenty of advice to her little sis.
   
“Oh, yeah, and it’s not always welcomed but I give it anyway. I think she listens and pays attention. She’s trying to figure out her own way. She’s a freshman. She has to live her own life and get her own experiences. I know I did my own dumb freshman stuff.”

And in the end…

Combining a career as a student-athlete with the rigors of working toward a nursing degree have forced Madison (and eventually Michaella) to sacrifice much along the way. There’s been little or no time for anything outside of those two realms.
   
“Volleyball means a lot to me, but nursing is the rest of my life. It’s my career. I’m not going to play volleyball in the future. I’m not going pro,” Madison admits.
      
When she walks across the stage next May in Eblen Center to accept her degree, she won’t look back over her shoulder and wonder.
   
“I will have no regrets, absolutely no regrets. I’m going to be extremely proud of myself for making it through all of this. I may have scared the freshmen away from nursing. Not many people get to even be a nursing major, and to be a student-athlete on top of it. A lot of people warned me how difficult it would be, and it has been really hard, but it will be so worth it. How many people can say they’ve done what I’ve done?”

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