One of Lexington’s most-decorated athletes returns home to face Kentucky volleyball team
Logically speaking, the athletic path of Kaitlyn Hord would have seemingly been settled early on.
She’s listed at 6 feet, 4 inches tall. She’s a supreme athlete. She’s also the daughter of a 1,000-point scorer for the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team, and she grew up in the hoops-crazy town of Lexington.
So, she was destined for the basketball court, right?
“We went out and we played a lot of basketball together,” her father, former UK star Derrick Hord, said of her earliest days in youth sports.
For whatever reason, that sport didn’t click. But another one did.
“I see the joy in volleyball more so than I ever saw with basketball,” said the elder Hord.
And so, the daughter of Derrick Hord — 38th on UK’s all-time scoring list and an NBA Draft pick in 1983 — stopped playing her father’s sport when she was about 12 or 13 years old. And she began her volleyball career around the same time, when she entered her freshman year of high school.
At that point, the Hords didn’t know a whole lot about the sport.
“We had no idea about volleyball,” Derrick Hord said. “If you see her first picture that she took for volleyball, she had on basketball shoes. But I saw the joy.”
The talent and possibility of greatness were obvious almost immediately.
Not long after picking up the sport, Hord earned a scholarship offer from Penn State, which had just completed an epic run of six national titles in an eight-year span, giving the Nittany Lions — at the time — the most NCAA championships in college volleyball history.
Hord committed to Penn State as a high school sophomore. The following season, she helped lead Henry Clay to the Kentucky state championship game. The Blue Devils lost that match to Sacred Heart, but they achieved the unprecedented in the process, becoming just the second public school to advance that far in the state tournament and the first to actually win a set in the title game.
That would turn out to be the end of high school competition for Hord, who had 13 kills in the state championship game but missed all of the following season with a shoulder injury.
She then left for Penn State, where she earned All-America honors in all four seasons with the Nittany Lions, including a first-team designation as a college sophomore. Penn State made it to the regional finals in each of her first two seasons but never advanced any further than that.
Following the 2021 campaign, longtime head coach Russ Rose — the winningest coach in NCAA volleyball history — announced his retirement. Several Penn State players also headed for the exits, including Hord, who had one more season of eligibility — granted to all NCAA athletes due to the COVID-19 pandemic — and decided to spend that year elsewhere.
“I think it was my time to spread my wings and fly to someplace else,” she said.
Hord found a new home in Nebraska, and she’ll be back in Lexington this weekend to play a match in her hometown for the first time since her high school days, with the 13th-ranked Kentucky Wildcats hosting the No. 2 Cornhuskers at 3 p.m. Sunday in Memorial Coliseum.
“I’m super excited,” she said of the hometown match. “Happy that my parents don’t have to spend money and fly or drive to come and see me. And to see my other family, as well, that haven’t been able to see me play, since Penn State was so far away from Kentucky.”
Why not Kentucky?
Derrick Hord and his wife, Lisa Higgins-Hord, are both UK graduates and both work for the university. If the most common question Hord hears about his daughter is, ‘Why not basketball?’ … then the next one is, ‘Why didn’t she go to Kentucky?’
The Cats were certainly a possibility.
By the time Hord reached high school, Coach Craig Skinner — previously an assistant at Nebraska — had already elevated UK’s volleyball team into a perennial NCAA Tournament contender. Skinner recruited Hord and apparently made a terrific impression on the young player and her family.
“She fell in love with Coach Skinner, as did I,” said her father. “And it was a difficult decision, but when Penn State comes and says, ‘We want you to come play with us’ — that’s what you do.”
Kaitlyn Hord said the Cats were also a player this past offseason, when she decided to leave Penn State as a graduate transfer and went through the recruiting process for a second time. Hord said UK was in her “top two or three” in both recruitments. She followed Kentucky’s progress — including the program’s first national title in the 2020 season — from State College, and she remains proud of her hometown school, even if she’ll never suit up for the Wildcats.
“I think the coaching staff there is absolutely incredible. Big fans of them,” she said. “It just was, I guess, a little too close to home for me. I had to step out and live my own life. But, yeah, everything about that program is awesome, as well. … Very proud of them. Very happy for them.”
Obviously, she won’t be rooting for them Sunday afternoon. Asked whether her UK-educated-and-employed parents would be wearing red in Memorial Coliseum for this weekend’s match, Hord answered immediately.
“They better be wearing red!” she said with a laugh.
Dad might not be on the same page there.
“I might have a white shirt on,” he said, not at all joking.
Hord went on to explain that — while he would have loved to see his daughter play for the Wildcats — he told her during the recruiting process that the college decision would be totally up to her, with one exception. “You can go anywhere,” he told her. “As long as it’s not Louisville.”
Hord, whose own college career ended with a loss to U of L in the “Dream Game” in 1983, said he had never worn the color red to a UK sporting event.
“And it won’t happen this weekend, either,” he declared.
Love of the game
While she obviously excelled during her time at Penn State — four consecutive seasons with All-America honors is quite the feat — Hord acknowledged this week that she lost some of the spark she had for volleyball over the past couple of years.
There was the COVID-19 pandemic, which scrambled her 2020 season. In January of last year, her Lexington club coach, Chris Beerman — a renowned figure in volleyball circles — passed away after being hospitalized with COVID-19.
“He was so instrumental in guiding us,” her father said. “And to this day, we still miss him so much.”
And, while Hord started every single match for Penn State over the past three seasons, the shoulder injury that sidelined her at the end of her high school career remained bothersome.
The move to Nebraska has rekindled her love for the sport.
UK was once again an option during the transfer process, but Hord simply fell in love with the Cornhuskers’ program. From an athletic, educational and medical standpoint, Nebraska checked every box and answered every question, according to her father.
“They were right on top of everything that she needed,” he said. “It was just an unbelievable place for her to go. She felt it. I felt it.”
Hord, a McDonald’s All-American from Bristol, Tenn., noted that his daughter’s college journey would have been like him playing for North Carolina and then Kentucky.
Her coach at Penn State won seven national titles. Her current coach, John Cook, has won four.
Hord joined a Cornhuskers team that made it all the way to the national championship game last season — losing a five-set thriller to Wisconsin — and began the 2022 campaign as the No. 1-ranked team in the country.
So far, her final season has been a success.
Last week, Hord got to play in front of the largest crowd for a volleyball game in NCAA history — 15,797 fans — in a victory over Creighton. Nebraska entered this week at No. 2 in the national rankings, losing its first match of the season — to No. 9 Stanford — on Tuesday night.
“It’s a lot different, just because I’ve been at the same place for four years,” Hord said of the transfer. “And I’ve just become so accustomed to doing things a certain way. So it’s been a little bit challenging trying to figure out how to change things, when you’re so used to them a certain way. But it’s been a good change. Everybody here is so nice and willing and wanting to work with you, so it’s a really positive environment.”
From an individual standpoint, there’s not a whole lot more for Hord to accomplish. Her team goals remain unfulfilled, however, though this Nebraska team looks like one that could possibly check that box. Her first trip to a Final Four? The possibility of playing for a national title?
“It’s just something I think everybody dreams of,” she said. “When I go to sleep at night, that’s what’s on my mind. It would be absolutely a dream come true. It would be amazing to get that far in the tournament and then win. And I couldn’t imagine doing it with any other group.
“I really have a good feeling about this team. I know we can do great things. And I’m really excited. When things click, it’s going to be scary.”
Her parents would obviously love to see such a run themselves.
“It would be awesome. I just want that for her,” said her father. “She’s worked hard. She worked hard in high school. She worked hard in club, with Coach Beerman. And then to go at Penn State and now at Nebraska? I can’t imagine. … She’s done a remarkable job. She’s a wonderful young lady. And a great athlete.
“She’s the All-American in our house.”
This story was originally published September 16, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
