Kate Jannazo walked into Niceville High School’s volleyball program last fall expecting to play on the freshman team.

• By the end of the season, the outside hitter had recorded 242 kills, 203 digs, 27 assists and 15 blocks, played every rotation for a varsity squad that made the playoffs and earned Offensive Player of the Year.

“Not expecting that at all,” Jannazo said when asked whether she expected to play such a prominent role. “I thought I was going to be on the freshman team.”

She doesn’t say a whole lot beyond that. Jannazo, now a sophomore, lets her stats do the talking. But through five matches of her second varsity season, what it’s saying has Niceville believing this year can be different.

The Lady Eagles (3-2, 1-0 in district) returned nearly their entire roster after losing just one senior from last year’s squad. Jannazo has logged 30 kills, 27 digs and 55 serve receptions on the season, ranking fifth in Class 5A District 1 in kills. She opened the season with 14 kills on a .435 hitting percentage in a 3-0 sweep of Navarre.

Head Coach Karson Jessup, now in her third year leading the program, said she took a chance on Jannazo as a freshman after losing nine seniors from the previous roster.

• “When you look at Kate, you see an athlete,” Jessup said. “She’s coachable. She’s ready to work, and she puts in the work.”

What Jessup notices that most fans don’t catch from the bleachers is how Jannazo moves the ball around the court. Where most hitters just go up and swing hard, Jannazo works down the line, to the deep angle and to the hard cross.

“She’s got a ton of tools in her toolbox that she utilizes whenever she needs them,” Jessup said. “She hits high, and she hits hard, and that’s what you want as a coach.”

Jannazo plays all the way around for Niceville as a six-rotation outside hitter, meaning she’s involved on both sides of the ball in almost every play. Jessup said the biggest growth from last year to this year has been comfort, both on the court and in the locker room.

“She’s much more comfortable making the plays that I was asking her to make last year,” Jessup said. “Her passing has improved a ton because she just knows the girls that are playing next to her.”

That passing, Jessup said, is what ties everything together.

• “If she can pass almost every single ball – and it be a good pass – and we can work through our offense, that’s a win in my book,” Jessup said.

Jannazo said the seven seniors on this year’s roster have played a big part in her confidence.

“I really love them,” Jannazo said. “They’re all my best friends and we all just get along. Everyone’s so comfortable with each other and they make me feel more confident.”

Jessup described Jannazo as the steadying presence for a team with strong senior leadership.

“She’s not the most vocal on the team, but everybody looks to her because she’s the calm in what we need, and she just does the job, and she does it well,” Jessup said.

Off the court, Jessup said Jannazo’s personality has started to come through as she’s gotten more comfortable.

• “She is a goofball,” Jessup said with a laugh. “But she’s one of those athletes where she comes in 110% all the time. She could take 50, 60, 70 swings in a match and come in still swinging as hard as she was at that match. There’s no wondering, ‘Where is Kate at today?‘”

Jannazo grew up in Destin, attending Destin Elementary and Destin Middle School before enrolling at Niceville. Her father, Joe Jannazo, is a Choctaw High School alumnus who previously served as Principal at Destin Elementary and is now the Principal at Ruckel Middle School, right next to Niceville High. Her mother, Jenna, a younger sister still at Destin Elementary, along with an older brother currently at the University of West Florida, round out the family.

Away from the court, Jannazo said math is her favorite subject. “It just comes really easy to me,” she said. She attends Destin United Methodist Church with friends and said she loves going to the beach.

She’s also a multi-sport athlete. Jannazo runs the 400, the 4×1 and 4×4 relays and throws the javelin for Niceville’s track team. As a freshman, she was an alternate on the 4×1 relay but ran every meet after a teammate was injured. The group set a school record.

“It meant everything to me,” Jannazo said.

Jessup said the multi-sport balance actually helps Jannazo come back to volleyball refreshed.

“She gets to take that load off of her shoulders for a little while,” Jessup said. “She comes into my gym refreshed, and the fact that we still have two more years after this, it makes me really excited for the development of our program.”

Her father said the work ethic behind all of it doesn’t happen by accident. He said Kate picks up extra workouts on her own, trains in the offseason when practices aren’t happening and writes the track times she wants to hit on her bedroom wall, where they stay all year.

• “Not everybody’s built to be elite, and sometimes we see it before they can as parents,” Joe Jannazo said. “There’s never been a time when we’ve said, ‘Hey, let’s get that extra rep in,’ that she wasn’t up for the task.”

He said at some point, the reminders stopped being necessary.

“She’s the one that’s putting in the extra time,” he said. “She’s got the right mindset to try to be elite, and that’s a road that she’s working towards because elite’s not the definition right now. It’s what we’re working towards.”

After a first-round playoff loss to Horizon last season, Jannazo said the team’s goal this year is clear.

“It’s our goal to go further this year, especially with more connection with the team,” Jannazo said. “We were young last year, but we’re older and more comfortable with each other, so I think we can go further.”

Her personal goals are just as direct: be a leader on the court and get more kills this year than last.

Jessup said she has no doubt about where Jannazo is headed.

“I have no doubt that she’s going to push herself past the point of excellent as a volleyball player if she wants to continue to do that,” Jessup said. “I’m just really excited to be a part of the journey.”