It’s not lost on Delaynie Maple that Indiana volleyball coach Steve Aird is a lifelong, suffering Toronto Maple Leafs fan.
If you don’t follow hockey, think Chicago Cubs until they finally won the World Series in 2016.
“I made a joke, ‘Are you only recruiting me because my last name is Maple?’,” she said with a laugh.
Well, no, because short of winning a pro tournament, Delaynie Maple has, up to this point, done about all she can do in beach volleyball. And it might have been a while, but Maple was a pretty good high school indoor player.
She graduated Thursday from USC, where all she has on her beach volleyball resume is four NCAA titles in four years, winning almost every postseason honor imaginable. That followed a stellar Torrey Pines High School/club career.
The theoretical next step would be to go pro full time on the beach, where she already has more experience than most 21-year-olds.
But …
She’s going to play for Aird, that aforementioned Canadian, the seventh-year head coach at Indiana.
“I’m mainly doing it this year to first get a master’s (in sports management) but also push myself in ways that I wouldn’t here,” said Maple, who committed to play beach at USC as a freshman in high school.
“I’ve been pushed incredibly at USC but it’s been comfortable in terms that I’ve known where I’m going the past seven years, I’ve known my coaches since I was 14, I’ve known every girl I’ve played with here since I was probably 12 or played against them. It was very familiar to me, which is why this experience has been so incredible at USC. It’s been the epitome of a second home.
“But I think I need to go away from home for a year and realize like I need to grateful for parents. I see them every weekend and I think I’m taking that for granted. Go somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a year where I’ve never been and test it and try a new sport.”
Well, not exactly. The 5-foot-11 Maple played indoor at Torrey Pines with teammates who would move on to Division I, including Yale setter Carly Diehl and libero Bella Chan, BYU outside Sophia Callahan, Kraft, and Indiana setter Emily Fitzner, who finished her indoor career at IU and transferred to USC to play beach.
And, of course, Megan Kraft, the 6-foot jumping jack who went on to become of the greatest NCAA beach players ever and Maple’s USC partner the past two years, where they went 27-3 at the No. 1 position in 2023 and 35-4 this season.
Maple played her first AVP tournament in 2018 and in 2019 at Huntington Beach, at just 16, she and Kraft became the youngest team to ever advance from the qualifier on the AVP Tour. The two won the 2021 FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships in Phuket, Thailand.
Maple is an outside hitter who understands her role at Indiana could be on defense: “Serve receive is like my favorite thing.”
She hasn’t played organized indoor volleyball since her Torrey Pines team won the 2019 state title. Playing in an open gym last summer, “is honestly what sparked my interest in going into the portal, that I’d forgotten how much I loved playing indoor.”
Indiana finished 21-12 last season, 11-9 in the Big Ten, and there are five outsides on the 2024 roster, where Maple is listed as one of five defensive specialists.
When she made the decision to spend a season indoors, she thought of her old WAVE club connections.
Rachel Morris, the Indiana associate head coach and recruiting coordinator, has been with Indiana two years, is a former WAVE coach.
Kevin Hodge, an IU assistant, was a teammate of Aird’s on the men’s team at Penn State, and was a coach and director of recruiting for WAVE.
“Within two hours of going into the portal I texted Kevin, almost as a joke, ‘I’m in the portal, when can you get me into Indiana?’ just kind of to mess with him,” Maple said. “And then I thought this could be a really cool opportunity if it was something I wanted to do.”
She spoke to Morris and set up a visit and it went well.
Maple’s dad is from Chicago, but going there is the extent of her familiarity with the Midwest. He encouraged to go to Bloomington.
“And I have no plan yet, because the AVP is so up in the air for this year, it was kind of like a perfect year for me to try something new.”
Maple turns 22 on June 9, eight days after she arrives in Bloomington.
“I don’t know if I want to go back to beach or if I want to go to indoor, but I think I’m going this to test out if I want to go back to indoor and see what opportunities are there for me. I know I don’t want to be done with volleyball next year and I know there’s a part of me that’s gonna want to play as long as I can.
“So I’m trying to figure out what I want to do in terms of what realistically makes the most sense for me.”
Maple, who has an eye on being sports media whenever she stops playing volleyball, said the development of pro women’s volleyball in America also got her attention.
“I’m going to be surrounded by people I respected immediately, like Steve and meeting all those girls. I’ve know Rachel and Kevin for years. Those are people who will make me a better human and a better player.
“So I’m just doing it to test myself. We’ll see if I’m glad I did it. I’m sure there will be days I regret it,” she said with a smile, “but I think I’ll be really happy I did it.”
