They finished as they began: From St. James to Stanford, unbeatable champions

There’s no escaping constant reminders of the past when you play for the Stanford women’s volleyball program.

The record number of national championships. Constant dominance since the early 1990s. Multiple Olympians in both indoor and beach volleyball.

Adorning the walls of the home dressing room at Stanford’s Maples Center are images of some of the Cardinal’s all-time greatest players: Olympians Ogonno Nnamani and Foluke Akinradewo, sisters Bev and Kim Oden.

Pressure? You bet. But for Stanford’s two seniors from St. James Academy in Lenexa, Kansas, it helped kindle greatness.

“We came into Stanford just wanting to make them happy and continue their legacy,” said setter Jenna Gray.

Mission accomplished. Gray and fellow St. James alumna Audriana Fitzmorris are set to graduate among one of the greatest classes in women’s volleyball history — not just in Palo Alto, Calif., but at any NCAA Division I school.

With three national championships, four Pac-12 crowns and numerous All-America team selections between them, Gray and Fitzmorris closed the book on their Stanford volleyball careers by lifting another NCAA championship trophy last weekend in Pittsburgh.

A 3-0 sweep of Wisconsin in the championship match capped a nearly immaculate NCAA run for Stanford, which dropped just two sets in the entire tournament en route to the title, Stanford’s second in as many seasons.

”It honestly feels surreal,” Fitzmorris said. “I think it’s still going to take me some more time to really let that sink in.”

It started at Sprint Center

The dream began to crystalize nine years ago, when Penn State defeated California at Kansas City’s Sprint Center to claim its fourth consecutive national championship.

In the stands, a young Fitzmorris sat beside her sister, Alexandra, watching the Nittany Lions sweep Cal.

“Going to the championships when it was here in Kansas City and seeing that firsthand was definitely special,” Fitzmorris said.

As a kid, she’d often go to her older sister’s tournaments, slowly falling in love with the sport before picking it up herself at age 10. Watching the Nittany Lions, who lost just two sets in that tournament, storm the court as the final point fell became a defining moment for a young Audriana.

“It’s something I’ve been wanting to compete in for a long time, ever since I watched it in 2010 when it was here in Kansas City,” she said.

It wasn’t long before Fitzmorris was winning titles, too — her first major championship came during her freshman year at St. James. Along with Gray, the pair won three Kansas Class 5A state championships with the Thunder. Attention from some of the top collegiate volleyball programs in the nation soon followed.

Both girls were recruited by and accepted to Stanford before their junior year, after winning back-to-back state titles. They’d taken a couple of unofficial visits to the West Coast school and visited with coaches from other prominent programs.

“We were talking with different teams and different coaches and it just happened that a lot of the things we were looking for turned out to be pretty similar when we looked at Stanford,” Fitzmorris said. “When we both got in and decided to go there, it was such an incredible experience to know that we’d be able to continue playing together.”

That whirlwind recruiting period held some irony for Gray — she’d never expected Stanford to truly be interested in her. Yet she’d go on to record 5,446 assists (second-most in program history) and 798 digs for the Cardinal.

A comfort level

That sort of production may not have come to fruition if not for the immediate comfort Gray felt with Fitzmorris, too, choosing Stanford.

“Once we both realized we were going (to Stanford), we were really, really excited,” Gray said. “On the court, it was nice knowing that I had at least one person out there that I already knew. She was just a really good person I could be with.”

Stanford won the 2016 national championship during their first year of college, and Gray and Fitzmorris both earned honorable mention honors from VolleyballMag.com. Subsequent national championships in 2018 and this season helped cement the class that includes Gray and Fitzmorris in Stanford history: They became just the second class in Cardinal history to win three national titles.

They did so alongside two-time AVCA National Player of the Year Kathryn Plummer and three-time AVCA All-America Morgan Hentz.

“I kind of forget they’re like mini-celebrities because they’re just my best friends — and Fitz, especially, I’ve been playing with her for eight years,” Gray said, laughing. “It’s just something so special not only to win but to win with good people and win with your best friends.”

And now, that chapter in the shared history of two of KC’s most decorated high school and college athletes ever, is coming to a close.

“After the final point (against Wisconsin last weekend), we all hugged each other and we were crying,” Gray said. “It was a little bit of happy tears and a little bit of sad tears.”