Trey Thornton
School: Maple Mountain
Grade: Junior
Sport: Volleyball
Boys volleyball is a relatively new sport for Utah’s high schools.
That means most athletes haven’t been seasoning their skills for long.
But that’s not the case for Maple Mountain’s Trey Thornton. The junior has already collected 189 kills in 12 matches for the Eagles, who are 10-2 so far.
Thornton says he’s been playing for about six years. But it wasn’t with school-affiliated teams or with boys club volleyball squads.
So what gives?
“I’m kind of an anomaly. I grew up in Alabama and I moved here this year. In Alabama, there wasn’t any boys volleyball; there wasn’t even club,” said Thornton, who lived in the Birmingham suburb of Hoover. “I practiced with a club called Alabama Performance and it’s all girls. I was the only guy in the gym. I practiced with them three days a week, maybe four.”
Thornton scores a great deal of his points from the right-side hitting position, but the lefty also gets in his licks from strong-side attacks. At 6-foot-6, Thornton’s size is just one factor in his success.
The rest of the credit, he says, goes to the girls who taught him how to play.
“Playing with girls is definitely different than playing with guys, but learning the fundamentals from girls has really helped me in my volleyball game,” he said.