Borum Determined to End UVA Career on High Note

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — She shined for the University of Virginia volleyball team in 2021, making the ACC’s All-Freshman team, and fully expected to reach new heights in every successive season. Instead, Brooklyn Borum acknowledged recently, she regressed as a player.

“I kind of got complacent with it,” Borum said. “I was just like, ‘OK, it’ll come.’ But I didn’t realize college is just such a different level. When you’re younger, you just get better automatically, but when you’re older, it’s harder. So I didn’t realize how much work you actually had to put in.”

After her junior season with the Cavaliers, Borum decided dramatic changes were required. She didn’t want to leave the program with any regrets.

“I came into the spring and I was like, ‘OK, enough is enough. I want to have a great senior year, and I’m going to commit myself to this program, to this team, to his coaching staff,’ ” Borum said. “And I just did everything I could in terms of my health, my nutrition. I was dieting, I was fueling my body the way an athlete should, and I think the commitment level I had to this program is paying off.”

Indeed, the Wahoos (10-1) are off to their best start since 2003, and Borum, a 6-foot outside hitter, has looked like the player everyone expected her to become after her stellar freshman season. An emergency appendectomy sidelined her for part of the summer, putting her training on hold, but that hasn’t deterred Borum this season.

She’s third on the team in kills (100), digs (81) and points (121), and she’s been named all-tournament twice this season: at the Cavalier Classic in Charlottesville and at the Liberty Tournament in Lynchburg.

“I’m just really proud of her journey,” UVA head coach Shannon Wells said. “Her first year she had an incredible year. The last two years have been a big struggle for her, just trying to find consistency. Any time you start off that great and then you don’t find that consistency in the second year and third year, it’s just a battle. It’s a battle within yourself each and every day. I think going into this last spring she just really committed to being the best version of herself that she could be, and not only from a volleyball perspective, but as a leader and upperclassman.

“She’s the leader we always thought that she could become, because people love her and want to be around her.”

Borum, an American studies major, has drawn inspiration from her teammate Grace Turner. Injuries slowed Turner for much of her college career, but as a fifth-year senior in 2022 she earned second-team All-ACC honors and led the Cavaliers on and off the court.

Turner is back in Charlottesville this fall, and she and Borum talk often.

“I just continuously thank her for her mentorship towards me,” Borum said. “She’s like, ‘No, that’s all you,’ and I literally tell her I couldn’t have done it without her. I look up to her so much and she’s been so great to me. She’s just the type of girl that always wants to give back.”

Turner “was such an incredible asset for our program,” Wells said, “and that’s what we see in Brooklyn right now. She’s just compelled. She’s willing to take the big swings. She’s our hardest worker at practice. She’s the first one to say things when things aren’t going in the right direction. There’s just nothing that’s going to stop her from being successful right row, and ultimately that’s what you would hope for from every senior. Your team ends up wanting to play for the seniors, and she’s being such a great role model for our underclassmen.”

As Turner has mentored her, Borum goes out of her way to share her knowledge with such younger teammates as sophomore Lauryn Bowie and freshmen Becca Wight and Sarah Brodner.

“They want to learn, they want to get better, and they want to build a leadership role in the future,” Borum said. “They’re just so receptive to feedback and it makes it so easy to play next to them.”

Borum is from Sterling, Ill., about 120 miles west of Chicago, and grew up in a volleyball-mad family. Her mother, the former Tami Alexander, played at Illinois-Springfield, and all three of Brooklyn’s sisters have played the sport in college.

The oldest of them, Jay, played at Illinois-Springfield, and Josi played at Chicago State and Youngstown State. Then came Brooklyn and Breelyn, fraternal twins who starred at Sterling High School, where their teammates included Lexi Rodriguez, now an All-American at Nebraska.

The twins could have stayed together after high school, but when it came time to choose their colleges, they chose to take separate paths. “We weren’t growing apart,” Brooklyn said, “but it’s just cool to experience different things.”

Breelyn spent her freshman year at Florida Gulf Coast before transferring to Loyola (Chicago), where she’s a senior.

“She’s a homebody,” Brooklyn said, “so she wanted to be closer to the family. And for me, it was just, ‘I want to go explore and find who I am as a person somewhere else.’ ”

Borum, wowed by her official visit, signed with UVA in November 2020. “I just absolutely loved how beautiful Grounds was and how invested everyone was in the athletic community,” she said. “I just felt so at home here with the team culture and how much everyone cared.”

When she signed, Borum had no idea she’d end up playing for Wells, who was then associate head coach at the University of Florida. In the spring of 2021, however, the head job at UVA unexpectedly came open, and Wells was hired.

After the coaching change, Borum could have asked for a release from her national letter of intent, and she briefly considered that option.

“But the moment I got on the phone call with Shannon for the first time, I knew that she wanted to build something similar to what I wanted to come in and do for this program,” Borum said. “So in that moment I knew I wanted to go play for her. We have the same goals, the same place we want to be. There were no second thoughts after I got off the phone with her for the first time.”

The Cavaliers haven’t finished with a winning record since 2015, and progress hasn’t come as rapidly as Borum hoped it would once she arrived on Grounds. Still, positive signs abound this season.

The Hoos will carry a seven-match win streak into conference play. In the ACC opener for both teams, Virginia meets Wake Forest at 7 p.m. Friday in Winston-Salem, N.C. UVA visits NC State at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Borum said she believes Virginia’s players are more invested in the program this season. “I think the past three years we’ve had some bumps in the road, some checking out, but this year I just don’t think there’s any people checking in or checking out. I think we’re all equally invested and we’re just ready to have a great season.”

The Hoos’ loss was to Coastal Carolina, which swept them on Sept. 6 in the Cavalier Classic at Memorial Gymnasium. The Hoos avenged that defeat the next day, rallying to edge the Chanticleers 3-2. That was the first of the three five-set victories Virginia has recorded this season, and those matches speak to the team’s growth, Borum said.

“I think it’s so impressive, and it just shows what our team is worth when this year we’re finishing those fifth sets and we’re winning,” she said. “We’re not being like, ‘We were this close.’ We’re actually winning those fifth sets.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.