NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former Kentucky volleyball All-American Avery Skinner called Anders Nelson this past spring with a question: If she made the United States team, would her former coach and mentor join her friends and family delegation at the Olympics in Paris?
Answering didn’t require great deliberation.
Nelson could hardly have declined—not after helping set Skinner on the path to Paris in the first place. Along with longtime Kentucky head coach Craig Skinner (no relation to Avery), who also made the trip to Paris, Nelson invested countless on-court hours helping the athlete hone the skills necessary to compete at the highest level. But the minutes he invested in a coffee shop meetup long after Skinner played her final game for the Wildcats may have been just as influential.
Catching up in 2022 before Skinner headed overseas to debut professionally, Nelson asked what she wanted from the experience. She spoke of seeing the world and having fun. Those were valid goals, he recalled, but they also didn’t sound entirely convincing coming from the person he knew.
“Avery, you’re not thinking even close to big enough. You can be an Olympian,” Nelson told her. “I remember her being a little taken aback. But one of the things that sets Avery apart is she has this determination. When she decides that she wants to go after something, there’s a twinkle in her eye. Even that day, I could see she was going to go after this.
“I wanted to make sure that she understood what she was capable of.”
She returned the favor soon after arriving home this summer with a silver medal—visiting Nashville and sharing her Olympic experience with the Vanderbilt student-athletes who are helping Nelson build a program. Skinner wanted the six first-year and four transfer student-athletes to understand what was possible with Nelson as their guide.
The Commodores are a long way from the SEC and NCAA championships that sit atop the program’s pyramid of goals, let alone from celebrating homegrown Olympians. But as Nelson and his coaching staff sit down with student-athletes for individual meetings this fall, the conversations will in many ways resemble that Lexington coffee shop encounter. And also, perhaps, the conversations Nelson has had with countless other student-athletes over the years, about earning a starting role, playing professionally, pursuing medical school, being a better friend and other subjects that fall under the all-encompassing…