A wave of quiet washes over the crowd as Ashley Jazbec (12) tosses the ball lightly in the air. Her open palm makes contact with the ball with a satisfying smack and sails over the net, wobbling slightly as it glides smoothly past the opposing team’s libero’s outstretched arms and onto the ground. The scoreboard shows Ashley’s victory: Harker’s score goes up by one.

“Ace, ace baby! Olay, olay, olay, ACE!” Her teammates, standing at the side of the court, shout a volleyball cheer. Ashley, proudly sporting a green jersey with her dark hair pinned back in a ponytail, smiles as she accepts high-fives from her teammates, then picks up the ball and returns to the back of the court to serve again. 

Behind Ashley’s smooth passes, hits, serves and sets lie a decade of training and hard work. Ashley recalls that she was first introduced to volleyball at the age of eight at the sideline of one of her brother’s games. 

“My dad had read an article about volleyball, so he showed me how to pass a ball at the side of the soccer game in the mud,” Ashley said. 

Shortly after that, she joined a recreational volleyball team at a park near her house, then joined school and club volleyball, which gave her the opportunity to do a lot of travel tournaments. Besides enjoying traveling, she also values the team environment of volleyball.

“I really like being a part of a team. And it’s an environment where it’s competitive, which is good for [my] mental health,” Ashley said. “It’s fun to push each other and see my teammates improve and support them. Volleyball is such a rewarding sport.”

Having participated in competitive cross country, dance and piano in middle school, Ashley decided to focus her energy on one sport in high school: volleyball. She played upper school volleyball all four years and further improved her volleyball skills during the offseason by playing club volleyball in addition to training three to five times a week. 

Her dedication to improvement can be found in her love for strength and conditioning. After injuring her knee and having to get surgery in eighth grade as well as spraining her ankle during freshman year, she realized the importance of conditioning for volleyball. 

“One thing that getting injured has taught me is that I just need to make sure I’m always stretching [and that I] keep conditioning, so now strength and conditioning is a big part of my training for volleyball,” Ashley said.

She remains humble about her achievements, but her sport accomplishments are no easy feats: she is now committed to playing college volleyball at Bowdoin College and is currently on Vision Volleyball Club’s 18 Gold team.

“I’d never expected to play volleyball at the collegiate level [or] to be on the club volleyball team that I’m on now, because when I was younger, whenever we played this team, we’d get nervous and think, ‘Wow, that’s Vision! That’s the top team!’” Ashley said. “But now I’m playing with these girls, this is my team, and it’s so surreal.”

Despite Ashley’s devotion to her sport, she has managed to balance her time well and maintain her friendships as well as giving back to the community through helping lead the community outreach committee on Green Team, the upper school LIFE mentor program and being the community service coordinator for National Honor Society.

Her advisor and AP Psychology and AP Environmental Science teacher, Jeff Sutton, remarks that Ashley has learned to strike a good balance between the activities she values: volleyball, learning and being a good friend.

Having come to the upper school in ninth grade at the encouragement of her close friend Grace Hajjar (12) and in search of more academically challenging classes, Ashley has made her influence felt in the best ways possible. In the hallways, she can often be found talking to underclassmen to make them feel welcome. 

“She’s very inclusive in a social setting,” Sutton said. “She doesn’t let anybody go unnoticed or unheard. She’s very kind and caring [in] that way.”

Besides talking to underclassmen in the hallways, Ashley also helps connect underclassmen with upperclassmen in her role as the co-leader of the LIFE program. When discussing various aspects of the LIFE mentor program and ways to improve it, she speaks her mind in a helpful, constructive manner. 

“One of the things that I like about Ashley is that if she complains about something, she follows it up with a possible solution,” Jane Keller, director of the upper school LIFE program, said. 

Grace met Ashley on her seventh-grade volleyball team; they grew closer and became best friends when they started carpooling to volleyball tournaments. Now, they carpool and jam out to music together.

“She knows me really well, sometimes better than I know myself. It’s nice to have someone like [her], who just genuinely cares about you through thick and thin,” Grace said. “The nice thing about Ashley is that she’s a constant. She’s everlasting and I know our friendship is never-ending.”