By Rick Cassano
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Faith Young is making an impact on the national volleyball scene.
It’s an exciting time for the 2024 Harrison High School graduate, who’s now a junior middle hitter in the Western Kentucky University women's program.
“Faith’s been an absolute joy to coach,” said WKU coach Travis Hudson, who’s in his 32nd year at the helm and has taken his Hilltoppers to the NCAA Division I tournament 18 times. “I’ve been fortunate to coach a lot of really good ones here throughout my coaching career. I’ve coached kids with more athleticism, but I’m not sure I’ve ever coached a better volleyball player.
“She has a very unique understanding of this game. I often say it looks like she’s playing chess and everybody else is playing checkers. Now that we’re in Year 3, she can almost finish my sentences.”
The 6-foot-1 Young ranks first in Conference USA and 11th nationally in hitting percentage (.430) this season. This comes after she was named to the CUSA All-Freshman squad as a collegiate rookie and first-team all-conference last year.
Young said the sport of volleyball has been gripping her since she started playing in the second grade.
“Honestly, I think I’m a volleyball junkie,” Young said. “When I have time away, I take it, but my life surrounds volleyball. If I’m not playing, I’m watching other schools playing on TV.”
She sets a high bar for herself and Western Kentucky does the same as a program. The Hilltoppers are 14-6 this year and sit atop the CUSA standings with an 8-0 mark heading into home matches with Kennesaw State on Friday and Saturday.
A lifelong Harrison resident, Young feels like she’s found another home at WKU, which is located just off Interstate 65 between Louisville and Nashville.
“I’ve just felt drawn to this place since I came on my first visit,” said Young, speaking in the media room inside E.A. Diddle Arena after last Saturday’s sweep of Middle Tennessee State. “I kind of had my mind made up about coming here after that visit. I’m close enough that I can get home if I need to. My parents come to every home game, which is amazing.”
Young has accumulated 194 kills for the Hilltoppers. The only teammate who has more is sophomore Kaira Knox (227).
A team-leading 48 blocks (seven solos, 41 assists), 40 digs, 17 aces and 11 assists are also part of Young’s statistical resume in 2026.
“This season has been what I expected, but I also dealt with a lower ab injury early in the year, so that kind of limited me a little bit,” Young said. “I’m definitely a lot healthier now. Our trainer Imani (Conner) is awesome. I wear a wrap for precaution, but I don’t feel any pain.”
She’s been playing in the middle since halfway through her freshman season after being recruited as an outside hitter.
Young was an outside at Harrison, though she played a lot of middle at the club level.
“We originally looked at her as an outside because we were concerned about her athleticism, her size,” Hudson said. “Most middle hitters at this level are touching 10-4, 10-5, and are awfully, awfully physical. Faith’s not quite touching 10 feet. But once I got her here and started spending time with her, I think she was just born to be a middle hitter. Her game translates there and defies whatever shortcoming there might be from an athletic standpoint.
“We have a history here of a lot of really high-level middles. I was a middle hitter as a player, and I’ve coached a lot of All-American middles here. We run a very unique system here in terms of what we do offensively with middles. I knew she would be a perfect fit for what we did from an offensive standpoint. You just didn’t know if it translated athletically or not.
“After working with her for a full year, I just had a moment where I thought to myself, ‘She can be a good outside hitter at this level or she can be a great middle hitter,’ and that has certainly proven to be true.”
Young said the really positive thing about being a middle is that she’s always being set up for success.
“I feel like you get opportunities in perfect situations,” Young said. “I feel like outsides and right sides get more out of system, so they’re just trying to keep it in play a lot. With middles, it’s just finish this play.”
Harrison coach Philip Deak said Young was “stupid athletic” during her days as a Wildcat.
“There’s not many girls that size who can move that way that have come through our programs around this area,” Deak said. “I joke that she always made me look like I knew what I was doing as a head coach.”
Deak got a chance to see Young play this season when the Hilltoppers were in the Beavercreek Invitational at Wright State. He said it was actually a little emotional for him.
“I won’t lie -- I definitely got a little teary-eyed seeing her warm up and playing D-I volleyball,” Deak said. “The whole Young family, they were definitely culture setters for us.”
Faith’s sister Grace is a 2020 Harrison graduate who went on to have a successful volleyball career at Mount St. Joseph University. The siblings are just far enough part in age that they didn’t get to play together as Wildcats, but Faith said her sister was the family member who stoked her love for volleyball at an early age.
“I would go to her practices and just play around,” Faith said. “She was really like my idol. I really wanted to be her.”
Their father Shawn was a high school soccer goalkeeper back in the day. Their mother Jill played soccer and basketball at Trine University. But volleyball found its way into Faith’s heart.
“I thought it was amazing how people were in the flow of the game,” she said. “It could be long rallies, short rallies or serving. It’s individualized, but it’s also the team aspect. Everything really drew me into it.”
Young said she recalled talking to Xavier and Morehead State before committing to WKU. She said one thing that high school players need to understand is just the speed of the college game.
Her decision to come to Western Kentucky was greatly influenced by Hudson.
“One thing I remember is Travis saying that he was going to take care of me and treat me as his own,” Young said. “That kind of made me fall in love with the place. Sometimes coaches see you as just players, but I really think Travis and the whole staff saw me as a person and then as a player.
“I knew I wanted to continue playing after high school, even if it wasn’t Division I. But as I grew my game and started getting reached out to, I was like wow, I really can do this.”
Young and Hudson both agree that the next step in her development as a player is improving her blocking. Her medium height as a middle makes execution even more vital.
“There’s no program we can put her in here that’s going to have her touching 10-5, but every inch higher that she plays is going to help her close that gap,” Hudson said. “She can start making up for some of that stuff with just her experience and understanding of how the game’s flowing and putting herself in position to block more balls that way.
“I literally would not trade Faith Young offensively for anybody in the country. Offensively, she is an All-American middle hitter right now. Blocking is where her game has to continue to grow if she’s ever going to be recognized on a national level as an All-American because the blocking numbers are a big piece of how middle hitters are judged.”
Young said she’s determined to sharpen her game with film study and on-court training. She’s proud of being among the national leaders in hitting percentage.
“I really think about not making dumb errors,” she said. “I know to just take care of the ball if it’s not there. If it is there, I just try to rip it. I’ve progressed a lot. For me, it’s about being as physical as I can every time I’m up in the air.”
Young, who will turn 21 in February, believe she’s become more of a vocal leader as her collegiate experience has increased. She said that really started last season.
“I kind of realized we had a really young team … if no one else could step up, I felt like it had to be me,” Young said. “I took a different approach mentally by saying this team really needs someone they can count on. I just flipped that switch. If you would’ve asked anybody freshman year, I would’ve been quiet as a mouse. But as I’ve progressed, I’ve gotten a lot more talkative.”
Young has two more years of eligibility available and plans to use them. She’s an excellent student who’s major in sports psychology. She plans to get a master’s degree and wants to be a pediatric occupational therapist someday.
Sundays are generally off days during the season. Young said those days usually include church, homework “and just laying in bed.”
WKU has been in the NCAA tournament the last seven years and is primed to qualify again this season.
“We always try to compete on a national scale to where even if we were to get upset in the conference tournament, we would still be an at-large,” Hudson said. “We are probably in the best shape we’ve ever been in as a program. Our RPI this week is 21 in the country.
“We are in an outstanding position to make a return to the NCAA tournament, then it’s about advancing. We have a talented bunch around Faith and a really deep roster in terms of our offensive talent, so we feel if we continue to grow a little bit, we can do some things when we get there.”
The Hilltoppers have lost in the first round (to Marquette and Minnesota) the last two years, and WKU is 9-18 in NCAA tournament play since making its first appearance in 2002. The program hasn’t had a losing season since 1997.
“We’ve been dreaming big about going further,” Young said. “We’ve been talking Sweet 16. We just need to keep grinding it out. We’ve seen spurts of being really good. We’re trying to build it to the point where we’re very consistent with that level of play.”
She still keeps track of how Harrison is performing. Young is excited that the Wildcats are 20-2 heading into the Division II postseason. She has a good friend (senior Maddie Ward) on the team.
Young said the bond within her WKU squad is tight. She admitted it’s difficult for most players to have friends outside of volleyball simply because they devote so much time to the sport.
At Harrison, Young was a three-time Southwest Ohio Conference Player of the Year. She piled up 1,403 career kills as the Wildcats posted an 80-18 record in her four seasons. Deak said he’ll keep watching wherever her career leads her.
“She’s just the sweetest, nicest kid, and she’s one of the hardest workers we’ve had come through our gym,” Deak said. “Faith can accomplish anything she wants.”