If you ever audibly take inventory of the lengthy list of accomplishments accrued by Kelley Kolinske, you will almost always get the same response: A mild-mannered surprise.
The winningest player in history at Pepperdine University? With 101 wins, a National Championship ring, and All-America honors? Yep: Kelley Kolinske.
Half of the youngest team to ever win an AVP tournament? Yep: Kelley Kolinske, who stormed AVP Mason in 2015 with Betsi Flint, when both were still in college. All it took was, oh, upsetting the tournament’s No. 2, 3, 4 and 6 seeds.
Two years later, as professionals, Kolinske and Flint won back-to-back FIVB tournaments, in China and Korea.
No biggie. And really, it isn’t, because this is simply what Kelley Kolinske does. She wins. And then she’ll go back to work, quiet as a church mouse.
Hers is a rare humility, Kolinske, and she’s paired herself with a partner, Emily Stockman, who’s equally as humble. In a sport that thrived on Instagram, they are the refreshing type who would simply rather do the work than talk and post and tweet about #thegrind.
It has showed.
In 2019, Kolinske and Stockman won AVP Seattle without losing a match. It came directly on the heels of a silver medal on the FIVB in Warsaw, Poland, where they knocked off world leaders April Ross and Alix Klineman and Brazilian sensations Agatha and Duda.
Then it was time to get back to work, in an Olympic race too airtight for any of the four remaining teams to comfortably breathe. And again, it is in that Olympic race that Kolinske and Stockman are so often ignored. Chatrooms and social media is filled with banter of Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat, Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes, while little is discussed of that plucky fourth team, currently ranked No. 7 on the planet.
And yet, in the season-opening event of 2021, in Doha, Qatar, who would it be but Kolinske and Stockman who won their pool, who knocked out Walsh Jennings and Sweat in the ninth-place match then pushed it further, winning their quarterfinal.
They’d finish the tournament in fourth, picking up a mighty boost in their Olympic ranking. Of course, don’t expect them to discuss it much, to post and rave about the progress they’ve made. They’re more content simply making progress, in the gym, at the beach, in the film room.
They’ll keep on winning – and it shouldn’t surprise you when they do.
