After months away from the gym and their teammates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the members of the Southwestern University Pirates volleyball team finally reconvened on the court in September. 

Practices were broken up into smaller groups staggered over shorter times due to guidelines set to keep students safer on campus. The college life the volleyball team returned to was very different from the one they left last spring. 

Still, when middle blocker Ashley Whitlock ''22 took her accustomed spot at the front of the line for hitting drills, a sense of normalcy washed over her. 

She christened the new school year with a booming shot over the net, setting the tone for a day of quality work. As Whitlock landed back on her feet fractions of a second after her shot bounced off the hardwood floor, unbridled joy swept across her face. 

"One of the things about Ashley is she lights up like the world is on fire when things go well," head coach Don Flora says. "When the full Ashley Whitlock is there physically, mentally, and emotionally, she's a joy to watch. If she does something on the court, she's going to make sure everyone in the gym knows that's one fun thing to do." 

It's a fire the Pirates have missed for far too long, going back even further than the onset of the pandemic and the in-person class cancellations of last spring. Injuries limited Whitlock to just 45 sets in her sophomore season, 40 fewer than the year before. 

As a first-year player in 2018, Whitlock was a revelation. In high school, she was a star athlete at Cornerstone Christian School in San Antonio, Texas. Still, she came to Southwestern with a chip on her shoulder after a non-volleyball coach told her she couldn't succeed at the collegiate level. 

"I came to Southwestern nervous that I wouldn't meet the expectations my new team had for me," Whitlock says. "I took all of the things [that coach] said and used them to fuel my fire so I could prove him wrong. I wanted him to know I wasn't 'lazy and a waste of talent,' as he previously told me. I was a hard worker, and I was going to fight to be at the top."

Whitlock quickly worked her way from not playing to being too good to leave off the court, developing into one of the best middle blockers in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) in the middle of her first season. 

Despite standing just 5 feet 7 inches tall, Whitlock soared over towering front rows in the SCAC, leading the conference in blocks per set (0.89) and hitting percentage (.395) in conference play in her first season. 

"She just had an amazing ability to score against the best teams in the conference," Flora says. "She's a physically gifted athlete, but what makes her special is her range—her swing pattern, her swing attack range. She hits the ball with a ton of power, about as hard as anyone in the conference, but all of it comes back to her ability to hit it a lot of different ways." 

For her efforts, Whitlock was named to the All-SCAC second team. "I cried when I heard," Whitlock says. "I was able to send the news back to that coach and show him just how wrong he was." 

A quick glance at Whitlock's resume would make it difficult for anyone to question her work ethic. In high school, she graduated summa cum laude and was in the National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, and National Art Honor Society while lettering in three sports (volleyball, track, and basketball), playing on a volleyball club team, and working multiple jobs in the summer. 

"I've always been the type of person to load my plate with multiple things at once," Whitlock says, "whether it's two or three jobs or balancing school with practice for two different teams." 

She carried that workload with her to Southwestern, taking on the demands of collegiate volleyball, a full course load, a campus job, and individual projects from various clubs. Eventually, it would catch up to her mentally and physically. 

"I started having problems with my knee in my junior year of high school, but I kept playing through it," Whitlock says. "Then in my first or second practice of my sophomore season, I jumped a little too hard and came down wrong. I rehabbed all season, but I hit a point where it hurt to walk, it hurt to go upstairs, and playing on it was not helping at all." 

Wear and tear injuries can be mentally taxing for athletes. There is no cast or scar to point to visible signs of injury. Sometimes, as was the case for Whitlock, the injury isn't substantial enough to keep them off the court but significant enough to diminish them on it. 

"That's the hard part of this deal. With the Pirate way, we talk about getting better every year, and sometimes your body doesn't keep up with you, and that's frustrating for any athlete," Flora says. "As a staff, we're thinking we're having an all-conference kid coming back, and she just wasn't quite whole. She was unable to get back to her norm."

Whitlock played sporadically throughout the season, shutting it down for the last six matches. "It was quite a struggle," she says. "I went from playing very well to not seeing the court at all. It was very hard for me to deal with mentally." 

She worked to find a new role on the team, cheering from the sidelines and contributing with her voice. She also took advantage of seeing the game from a new vantage point for the first time in her life. 

"I was able to step back and look at other teams' rotations and see where the open shots were," Whitlock says. "From the sidelines, I was able to see the whole court instead of having tunnel vision. I was able to translate that to my team, and now coming back, I'm able to take what I learned from the sidelines and apply it myself." 

Still, those joyous moments of celebration on the court were few and far between. The team culture—otherwise known as the Pirate way— emphasizes three edicts: take care of yourself, take care of your teammates, and take care of the program. "Ashley really needed to dig into the first one," Flora says. 

When the pandemic hit in the spring, it brought everything to a standstill in a way that Whitlock probably needed but would never allow herself to take. 

"Once the quarantine came, I didn't work, I didn't play volleyball, or do anything else. It was a much-needed break," Whitlock says. "I took the time to really reflect on the season, my workload, and what I could handle. I was able to destress myself and evaluate how much I could take on." 

Back on campus, the business major has been able to resume her on-campus job with Southwestern Intramural & Recreational Activities (SIRA), enroll in 19 credit hours, play volleyball, and start an internship with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce. "If I hadn't had that break, I would've had to have dropped multiple things," Whitlock says. "I wouldn't have been able to handle it all at once." 

Whitlock's internship has revolved around networking with multiple local businesses, providing experiences she's been able to take back with her to the volleyball court. 

"I've had to learn how to work with people who work differently than me," Whitlock says. "The more I network in my internship, the more personalities I meet, the easier it is to work with my teammates to mesh our personalities together. With our first-year teammates, I'm able to help them learn all the things Flora and the staff bring to our program that's different from other programs. I can explain why we do what we do without sounding like a coach or a boss."

While slowly phasing in aspects of normal life has seemed restrictive to many students, it has allowed Whitlock to slowly work back up to speed off the court and on. 

"Being able to start slowly with smaller groups and work back to full six-on-six has probably helped her," Flora says. "Watching her hit balls with the same thunder she had her first year, you can just see her smile and the beauty of why sports are so important. It just reopened the joy of being in the gym for her." 

"That first practice, Katie [Whitehead] set that first ball, and I slammed it to the 10-foot line," Whitlock says. "I landed and was just like, 'This is the moment I've waited over a year for.' I missed this so much, and I know now it's time for me to come back." 

Heading into a spring volleyball season, the world remains anything but normal. But seeing Whitlock attacking at the net with confidence and joy once more brings thoughts of better days with hopes of an even brighter future for the Pirates volleyball team.