UTC volleyball star Gylian Finch climbs into school record books
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — No, Gylian Finch hasn’t watched Squid Game. And why should she? She’s too busy breaking records.
With just five games left in the regular season, the Chattanooga Mocs volleyball standout is looking to thrust herself into legendary status.
During her four-year career at UTC, she has amassed 937 kills, 86 aces, and 3,240 career attack attempts. If during the next handful of games she can eclipse 1,000 kills she would be just the 10th player in Mocs history to do so. She is 12 aces away from 10th all-time. Her 3,000 attacks already put her at 8th most in program history.
“That’s pretty cool,” Finch said of her records. “I knew the kills one. I think at this point I need like 10-12 kills per match to reach that mark, but that’s only within the five (regular-season) games.”
She needs 12.6 kills per match to be exact. The only reason Finch even knows she’s close to that 1,000 kills mark is because of her loyal fan base.
“I only know that one because my mom is obsessed with me hitting that number. But other than that I didn’t know. I knew I was at 3,000 attack attempts, but I didn’t know where I was in the rankings,” Finch said.
In volleyball, and sports in general, statistics can be as grueling as they are gratifying. They look nice on paper, they play well with the fans, but the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to earn them behind the scenes rarely get shown under bright lights.
Perhaps the most impressive stat on Finch’s resume, one that encapsulates all her hard work on and off of the court, has to do with her availability. Of the 102 matches during her time at UTC, she has played in 98. This type of longevity doesn’t just show how durable she’s been, but what a struggle it has been at times to get here.
“I play through injuries a lot of the time. I only sit if I can’t move. This year would have been the first match that I’ve ever sat without a concussion,” Finch said.
Toughness is something that’s innate and in Finch’s case, that much is obvious. Still, the credit for some of that longevity can be traced back to her high school days where she played four different sports over the course of her high school career — volleyball, basketball, softball, and track.
“I guess I’m just used to doing a lot of stuff,” Finch said. “I would say track definitely helped a lot with being able to just keep going. Because it’s just one of those sports where you just have to keep going. They definitely help you get used to every situation because different things happen in different sports.”
In addition to being such a reliable lynchpin in the Mocs’ lineup over the years, Finch can also be described as a creature of habit.
During warmups, the team will go through a flurry of drills and mental preparation, all of which Finch participates in, but it’s not until she gets a scoop of pre-workout mix and listens to her favorite hype song that she feels ready.
“Fifteen minutes before (the games) I take pre-workout … it gets me jittery and then it helps me focus more. I listen to the same exact song. It is called GodLovesUgly (Remix). And it’s like a headbanging song and I just sit there with my eyes closed and bang my head to the song,” Finch said.
As far as the season has gone for Finch, things have been stellar. As a team, on the other hand, things have been more up and down. The Mocs currently sit at 8th in the Southern Conference standings. However, three of their last five games are at home, and after a big 3-0 win against Furman yesterday, the Mocs showed they are anything but finished.
Before each of the remaining games, Finch will pop in her headphones, queue up GodLovesUgly, and these lyrics will flow through her ears, “Abandonin’ the norm, and handlin’ the harvest. Measurin’ the worth by the depth of the hardship.”
It’ll be an uphill climb the rest of the way if the Mocs want to reach the heights they desire, both individually and collectively. Luckily for Finch, she never wanted an easy route. She always measured the worth of the task at hand by the depth of its hardship.
