Katie Coburn was honored at the volleyball senior night on November ninth, not as a true ‘senior’, but an athlete playing her last home game. Katie is a junior at OIT, majoring in Radiologic Science. She not to go through two years of pre-requisites to play four years, so next year she will be going on her externship.
At the start of freshman year, Katie planned on doing a two-year pre-year: “fall and winter term that was my plan. Then for some reason I was just like, ‘man, I at least want to try this year’. And so spring term I took 24 credits and busted it out and applied and I got in. I don’t know how that happened, but I’m like ‘okay cool’ and I guess I was thinking I have too many loans already and I wasn’t getting a huge scholarship so why not try for it now.”
What is interesting about Katie is that she knew exactly what she wanted to by the time she was a junior in high school. “I had never broken a bone or anything. I didn’t really know what it was like; I just thought it would be fun [radiologic science]. So I checked it out and applied here. This is the only school I applied to so I’m glad I got in. And I’m glad they wanted me to play volleyball for them.”
When she came, school was first, volleyball was second. She still remembers her freshman year: “It was really hard my freshman year. When they came and dropped me off, like my whole family came to drop me off for the weekend and when they left I was just bawling. And having the volleyball team really helped; it just takes your mind off of it, especially the first term here. Having them for support was great.”
Her freshman year, the team “was really welcoming. I was the only freshman on the team, so they kind of all took me in because I had no one to cling to. Most of the freshman cling to each other and just becomes buddies with each other. So they just included me as one of them, like I had been there the whole time, so it was nice.” “I never really had ‘freshman experience’,
which I’m okay with.”
I asked her how she dealt with playing while two other Katie’s are on the team: “my freshman year there were two Katie’s, and so I was considered ‘Baby Katie’ and everyone called me that last year and the year before. And Katie Fuller is considered ‘Big Katie’. And then this Katie came [Katie Nelson] and some of us call her ‘Infant Katie’. We kind of have different nicknames for her, but Coach calls her Nelsey, because her last name is Nelson. But that kind of confuses Kelsey, so…” It’s a little difficult, but they deal with it very well. Plus, it is not anything knew for Katie Coburn. She had three Katie’s on her club team growing up, and she told everyone to call her shaniqua, but it only lasted one day. Oh well--it was a good try!
Katie is sad that this is her last year, like any player, but she said that she is even more sad knowing that she still has one year of eligibility left. However, she is excited for her extern. She wants to go anywhere between Portland and Corvallis. “I just don’t want Alaska.” This is because her family is in Salem, her boyfriend lives in Corvallis, and her brother lives in Portland. “Anywhere [I go] I have people to hang out with and live with.”
Katie says that the biggest strength she contributes to the team is her positive attitude. “I try not to complain, like ever, and I know that I mess up a lot and so…I’m the setter so if someone doesn’t give me a great pass I’m not going to go yell at them. That’s just the way I’ve been brought up, that people make mistakes so get over it and move on.”
Her advice she would give to young, aspiring volleyball players is: “just keep your head up. Coaches are going to yell at you and get on you for certain things and you just have to take what they are trying to say, even if they don’t say it the way you like—just take what they’re trying to say and use it as good advice. They are wanting you to get better, that’s why they are yelling at you. Take the good out of it.”
Something I found really interesting while talking to Katie is that she is the Vice President of the Taco Bell Fan Club! “We [her and some friends] made it up my sophomore year of high school. We decided to get a group of people together and go to Taco Bell every Tuesday, and call it Taco Bell Tuesdays and we’d have “meetings” we’d call them and just eat Taco Bell and talk pretty much. And then we decided to take it to the next step and so the Taco Bell people knew us and would give us stuff and we would get free drinks on Tuesday s. then we decided to make a test that everybody would have to pass if they wanted to join our little group. It was an easy test, and some people started taking it just for fun and we ended up getting like 75 people in this little ‘Taco Bell Fan Club’. Then Taco Bell gave us shirts and took pictures of us and put us in their world-wide magazine. So it actually became a real thing…it got to be a lot bigger than we expected.”
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