How many parents would let their high school daughter live 450-plus miles away for weeks to train for beach volleyball? Lauren Wilcock’s family did in 2020, and it worked out well for the athlete, now a junior on the Husky team.
Wilcock got her start in the sport in eighth grade when she lived in New Jersey, and since her high school and club system had limited opportunities to compete or practice she had to pioneer her own path.Since she often went weeks without playing, she chose instead during the pandemic to drive 8 hours to Raleigh, North Carolina, to train and live with some beach players for weeks on end while taking online classes.
That experience vaulted her onto the University of South Carolina team. Wilcock played well for the Gamecocks before transfering to UW. While at SC, she was named to the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association All-Freshman Team. She studied exercise science there as a springboard into the medical field.
Medicine has been calling her name since seventh grade, even before she took up beach volleyball, she said. Wilock’s grandmother and grandfather were involved in the medical field as an anesthesiologist and surgical nurse, respectively, along with her cousins who are PAs or biomedical engineers.
But even though she wants to go to medical school, she hopes to pursue a master’s in public policy or biomedical engineering first. She explains that biomedical engineering is: “the ins and outs of how medicine is developed and how to go about it in an ethical way.”
She’s using her free time off the court to study for the MCATs and hopes to pursue emergency room medicine. Wilcock likes the idea of helping to diagnose and help direct the ER instead of being the one operating.
Beach volleyball season starts in three weeks, and Wilcock is encouraged by what she sees in practice as the team looks ready to compete coming out of the break. Starting strong will be crucial when the Huskies open their season against TCU, one of the top teams in the country.
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