Senior volleyball star Kyra Schmidt announced her commitment to Indiana University of Pennsylvania earlier this year.  During Schmidt’s senior season, she led the North Allegheny Girls’ Volleyball team to win both the WPIAL and PIAA titles, adding to program’s seven-year consecutive winning streak.

Schmidt has been around volleyball her whole life.

“I started officially playing on a club team when I was in fifth grade,” she said.

Although neither of Schmidt’s parents played volleyball in high school or college, they picked it up through their work and church friends, who played for Penn State.

“They have kids around my age,” Schmidt explained. “Since I was with them a lot when I was younger, I was exposed to volleyball.  After watching my brother play and going to his games and tournaments ,I knew that I wanted to play as well.”

Schmidt views her brother as her role model, since she grew up watching his games.

“He has taught me so much about volleyball, and I have always strived to follow in his footsteps,” she said. “After seeing him win states with his team his senior year and then go on to play college volleyball, it really inspired me to push myself even harder, so I could also achieve those goals.”

Schmidt has known for a long time that she wanted to play a sport in college.

“After I started playing volleyball, I knew that that was the sport I wanted to play,” she said.

It was as early as her sophomore year that Schmidt began her recruiting process. But since college coaches are not allowed to contact athletes until June 15th before their junior year, Schmidt only started real conversations the summer before 11th grade.

But then a challenge presented itself, when she suffered a fracture in her foot and was out all of her junior season.

“I fell behind a bit with recruiting, since I didn’t have any film,” she said.

Although her junior year did not go as planned, she never gave up on herself.

“I started going on visits and really started narrowing down my list of schools in the spring and summer of my junior year,” Schmidt said. “Then after I went to a couple of camps and had a few more phone calls with coaches, I knew that IUP was the place for me.”

As soon as Schmidt set foot on the campus of IUP, she fell in love.

“The campus was beautiful and the facilities were just as amazing,” she said. “As soon as I got on campus in July for camp and met the girls on the team, I knew it would be the perfect fit for me.”

Schmidt also enjoys how close the school is to home. 

“Being close to home is very important to me,” she said.

Schmidt is going in undecided for her major but is thinking of studying either education or environmental engineering.

“IUP has both majors that I am interested in, which was a rare occurrence,” said Schmidt.

But she is also looking forward to the independent aspect of college.  

“I am also super excited to make a ton of new friends and become closer with my teammates and coaches,” she said.

Although Schmidt is looking forward to the next chapter in her life, she admits that she will miss her NA family.  

“NAVB is so awesome, and if I could do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat,” she said.

Schmidt joins four other NAVB senior commits, Avery Butcher (Dickinson), Marin Dunaway (Bowling Green), Rylee Gadomski (Ohio Northern), and Elysia Smith (Seton Hill).