Tanner Built Own Legacy As 'Character With Character'
December 01, 2017 | Volleyball
SEATTLE - Bailey Tanner has spent five years as a Husky putting up more than three thousand sets for her teammates to put down for Husky points, with six years of playing club before all that, and along the way has acquired more than her fair share of bumps, bruises, and breaks.
So, does she still love it?
"Definitely. More than ever."
Maybe it's just that volleyball runs in Bailey Tanner's blood.
It is a sport that has always been a part of Tanner's life and remains the family business. Her father, Troy Tanner, was an Olympic Gold Medal-winning player, one of the legends of the sport, and the coach for Misty May and Kerri Walsh during their first Olympic beach Gold. Bailey played for Troy's Tstreet Volleyball Club growing up, which the family still runs in Irvine, Calif. near their oceanside home in San Clemente.
Everyone may have assumed Bailey would follow in Troy's footsteps, but there was never any pressure for her to do so. Her parents let her find her own way to the sport.
"I think people knew I was going to play volleyball but my parents didn't want me to until sixth grade," she says. "They wanted me to try other things and figure out what I liked and not just do the family thing."
There have been moments where Bailey "didn't give enough effort or didn't play smart" she admits, and those would be tough with an Olympic medal-winning father watching, but she saw it as "positive pressure that came out of love."
"We care more about that relationship than how I play," she says. "He's a really cool dude."
Tanner came to Washington as a lauded recruit in the fall of 2013, but her transition to the collegiate level got put on hold by a stress fracture in her foot. She and fellow top recruit Carly DeHoog had to support from the sidelines as the Dawgs made a run to the Final Four while they both dealt with year one injuries.
"Carly has been really helpful, and had a similar story to me injury-wise," says Tanner looking back on the redshirt year. "We both sat for a long time and had to figure out a role on the team other than playing. It can be hard when you're hurt because you don't feel like you're a part of it, you want to help, but how do you help if it can't be on the court? But our team has always been good at making each other feel included I think."
When Tanner did break into the mix in 2014, playing a 6-2 rotation with Katy Beals, the Dawgs roared to a 25-0 start to the season and a No. 2 national ranking. The Dawgs had a ton of returning firepower, including a reigning National Player of the Year, and Tanner didn't want to disappoint.
"Here I am as a freshman setting Krista Vansant," she says. "It was like 'Okay I had better locate this ball' – then if you think about that too much you're going to get uptight and not set as well, so it sounds cliché but you need to believe in yourself and not overthink it."
Easier said than done, considering all the things a setter does have to think about going into every match, learning the gameplan, and then executing it based on specific matchups across the net.
Tanner rattles off an example of a scouting report: "Like if we're going to set the one gap, maybe we'll skip it against this team but against this other team we're not going to skip because we like this overload, and then if they come in for a four we're setting back or if their middles front we're going to go long distance … yeah" she finally pauses, "there's a ton going on."
While climbing up to No. 4 on Washington's career assists list, Tanner has helped five different Husky hitters earn All-America honors: Vansant and Kaleigh Nelson in 2014, Lianna Sybeldon in 2014 and 2015, and Crissy Jones and Courtney Schwan in 2016.
Hitters are usually the ones that get to be "on fire" but setters have to find their rhythm first to light that spark.
Tanner says sometimes "I just know that I'm dialing in sets and I know right after it comes out of my hands how I did. The hitters get in there and you just watch and know they're going to take care of it. You did your job and you know they're going to finish the job. I love that, it's really fun."
At one point Tanner was terminating those rallies herself. She played both setter and outside hitter in club and during the second half of the 2015 season Tanner would set in the back row and then attack as a hitter in the front row, with career-highs of 13 kills that year against both USC and Cal. But injury issues cropped up again, with Tanner dealing with plantar fasciitis and knee tendonitis, and increased depth at the outside hitter spots have meant setting exclusively the past two years.
Although she does occasionally "miss ending rallies" the best way Tanner can help the Huskies she says is to "just dish and let our hitters do it. I love my job and everyone on this team is so good so I don't feel like I should be hitting."
With her final season drawing to a close, Tanner looked around the empty Alaska Airlines Arena on a random weekday before practice, and was feeling very grateful.
"I'm stoked that I came here," she said. "Sitting here, this (arena) is so cool. I don't think people get it. I don't think I fully got it until this year. No one has vibes like this."
Not many people exude the positive vibes that Tanner does on the court, where her smile and laugh sometimes make it hard to tell if the Huskies just won or lost the last point.
Carly DeHoog says off the court Tanner laughs the loudest, is lighthearted and loves a good meme and taking naps with her dog, Fish. "I don't think I said 'gnarly' until I met her," says DeHoog. "She's always the most up-to-date on the latest memes and the latest slang.'
But on the court, DeHoog says Tanner is "one of the toughest kids with what she's had to go through injury-wise and health-wise. When she steps in the gym she's going to want to compete. The minute we're in six-on-six drills it doesn't matter if you're her best friend she's going to kick your butt if you're across the net."
A director of traffic on the court, Tanner is a ringleader on road trips, on busses, in the locker room, anywhere she and her teammates have a chance to "be our goofy selves."
"I think I'm just really weird, so people maybe don't feel as much pressure not to stand out with me," is her assessment. "We have a lot of super different, funky personalities on the team, so I think having the seniors especially just be ourselves helps, because then we feel we can be vulnerable and say silly things and mess up around each other. I think our whole program is pretty good at that, instead of judging just embracing and loving each other for it."
Head Coach Keegan Cook captured two parts of her personality when reflecting on Bailey for Washington's Senior Night – the outgoing, upbeat nature matched with an ultra competitiveness.
"She is our character with character," he said. "You don't forget Bailey Tanner. The best thing I can say about her is that I don't know if anyone loves this game more than Bailey. I think love of the game is ultimately measured in what you sacrifice to compete with and for your team. She's a medical miracle in my eyes who embraces her team, her program and the opportunity to compete each and every day."
Tanner brushes off her injuries as "nothing unmanageable." The latest culprit was a dislocated and broken finger during UW's road match at USC on Oct. 1, where Tanner had the finger put back in place, unaware of the break at that point, and got back into the match just a few points later. Unfortunately she would miss the next four matches, after missing just two sets total in 2015-16. Tanner is still on track to break into the top-10 in career sets played at UW, and were it not for the broken finger she would already be No. 4 in school history in total sets.
The consequences were felt in the offseason. "I played one spring in five years," she laments. "I had surgery three of those springs. I was always excited after a season planning for the winter to do weight training and take care of school, then spring would really be my time to grind and figure things out, but that rarely worked out."
But Tanner always managed to fight her way back to the court each fall. "I don't feel sorry for myself at all. I feel really lucky," she says.
Senior season has been a roller coaster, with Tanner laughing that the opening weekend loss to Creighton may have been Washington's first preseason loss in program history (it's not). But the Dawgs fought for a second-place Pac-12 finish and still find themselves with a No. 8 national seeding and hosting NCAA first and second rounds. In her five years, the Huskies won three Pac-12 titles and finished second in the other two years.
"We still have some goals. We're not Pac-12 Champs this year but there are bigger things than that," she says. "If you told me coming to U-Dub we'd be Pac-12 Champs twice I would have taken it, that's unreal—but definitely not done yet. I think it's cool that we're finding our stride at a good time. It's about December more than all the months we've had that have not gone according to plan."
The plan after December is T.B.D. Tanner is completing her Bachelor's degree in Sociology and is a Pac-12 All-Academic honorable mention who enjoyed "kind of dark" classes the best, like Sociology of Murder and criminology classes. But a C.S.I.-style career isn't the first option, as Tanner is hoping to join a long list of former Huskies going pro overseas.
Tanner expects to look for a contract in Europe and train over the summer before heading abroad in the fall "to try it out and see if it's for me."
Whatever comes next, Tanner knows "I'll for sure miss the people here. Everyone in this program and everyone that's involved. So many pieces that make up the whole deal, and they're all so important. That's going to be weird to not have all that support system. I'm super grateful for all the time and resources and everyone here."
"I've kind of been fully focused on this season and not really looking ahead, but I'll need to get going on that soon. I'm excited. I'm not nervous, I think whatever happens will be good. I'm ready I think for the next step."
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