Senior 6’1” outside hitter Lucy Dumford committed to division I High Point University in North Carolina to play volleyball. She committed on June 1, when she attended a visit of the campus.

“I reached out to them first and the coach was like, ‘I would love to have you here, you seem like a great person’ and they came out to watch me around Easter, so in April, and then the whole month of May is a dead period where you can’t see the coaches, so June 1 I decided to go out to the campus, so as soon as possible, and I took a tour and committed that day,” Dumford said.

Dumford had looked at other schools as well during her recruitment process.

“A while ago, like last fall,  I was talking to, and was pretty serious with Loyola Chicago and that is where I thought I was going to go play, but then they got new coaches, so that sort of fell through. Then I had to restart the whole recruiting process over again. My favorite schools were probably University of Rhode Island and Stony Brook,” Dumford said.

Although Dumford had looked at other colleges, she knew that High Point was the school for her after attending a tour and meeting the team and coaches.

“I guess it is sort of cliche like you get that ‘magical sort of feeling’ that you know where you are supposed to be, and I guess when I went to visit, I had that feeling like I knew. I want to do exercise science, so I took a tour of those facilities, and I met the coaches and some of the girls, and everything just seems so perfect, and that’s what I wanted. The campus is super nice and it’s a small school,” Dumford said.

Varsity volleyball coach Kristee Conrad, who has known Dumford for four years now, is certain Dumford will be successful at High Point University.

“She has crazy athletic ability that I’ve noticed from day one. I mentioned this in another interview, but she came in not being one of the most talented players, but one of the most athletic by far. I can recall at tryouts having her hit balls actually against the wall, when she was supposed to be hitting in bounds, but I just knew how much athletic potential she had, so in addition to that, she has crazy amounts of grit and work ethic,” Conrad said.

“Whatever she wants in life, she will be able to get because she is willing to work for it, so I think between her athletic potential and her desire to grow, she will be successful in college,” Conrad said.

Even though Conrad is very happy with Dumford’s commitment, she is sad that this means Dumford’s career at DGS is coming to an end.

“I will miss her one-liners, Lucy is different in a lot of ways, and she’s funny because she doesn’t go out of her way go be funny, she just makes comments that are absolutely hysterical. When she talks about her cats or about really strange things that occur in the day, or when she has her squeaky voice come out when she doesn’t mean for it to come out, those are all really funny times that we like to laugh at,” Conrad said with a smile on her face.

Junior Rose Dumford, Lucy’s Dumford’s sister, will definitely miss Lucy both on and off the court.

“We spend a lot of time together at home, and we are pretty close, so I will definitely miss having someone to go to for anything really, and for school and volleyball, I will definitely miss someone to look up to and see how hard she works and kind of set that as my standard,” Rose Dumford said.

Lucy Dumford is 1 of 9 commits at High Point University for the 2019 class, and she couldn’t be more excited to play with them.

“I am really excited for the challenge of something new and working really hard towards something, and just the whole team aspect. I just want to be with a group of girls like family to me,” Lucy Dumford said.

With these big changes of going to a new state, and playing with new girls, she will not forget where she came from: Downers Grove.

“These are the people I have grown up with, and the high school years have made drastic changes to myself as a person to grow and develop to who I am today, so I guess all the people here have helped me along that process, and DGS volleyball for me is like a family, it’s just like a safe place to be, so I will be missing all these girls every day,” Lucy Dumford said.