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VARSITY October 17, 2013
t never really occurred to Wisconsin's Deme
Morales that she might be too short ― or not
tall enough ― to compete successfully in volleyball until she began exploring her college options.
"It became a huge question then," said Morales,
the 2010 Gatorade State Player of the Year and
a two-time all-state selection out of Steele High
School in Amherst, Ohio, 30 miles west of Cleveland.
Morales heard a lot of things, she said, and it all
gave her pause for thought.
Such as, "Is that (size) going to influence your
decision being only 5-6 or 5-7?"
Such as, "Would that determine whether you
wanted to go to a smaller D-I school or D-II?
Such as, "If you played at the higher levels, would
you only be a defensive specialist or libero?"
Would she be relegated, in her own words, to the
back row as a defensive replacement?
"It was a big decision that I faced," Morales admitted.
It was made all the more complicated when
Xavier University made a coaching change prior to
the start of her senior year of high school. Morales
had been verbally committed to the Musketeers.
After reopening her recruiting ― and there were
a number of in-state choices from Ohio State to
Ohio University to Dayton, a perennial NCAA tournament team under Kelly Sheffield ― she settled
on Wisconsin, one of the last schools to show interest.
"When I first got here," Morales said, "I was willing to accept the challenge. If the opportunity that
I was given was to play a role in the back row, then
that's what I had to do. But if the opportunity arose,
I would definitely jump on playing in the front row,
too."
As fate would have it, the aforementioned Sheffield left Dayton last January and took over the UW
program. Morales has since become an integral
component of his first team with the Badgers as a
front-row hitter; at 5-foot-7, the shortest outside
hitter in the Big Ten. The next smallest is 5-10.
"I've probably seen one outside hitter in my time
coaching in a top 25 program that is 5-9 or smaller,
and this kid is 5-7, you just don't see it," said Sheffield. "I've seen her play for a lot of years. She's always been a tough-minded kid. She had a toughminded coaches and a tough-minded family.
