Haverly completes historic IU career

Senior outside hitter Jordan Haverly walked off the volleyball court from her final IU game on Nov. 29, a crimson No. 2 on her front and back and a brace on her left knee.

As she walked back to the locker room, feelings of disbelief and sadness swept over her as the shock of her career ending started to hit her. She didn’t want to leave the sense of family shared with team members.

It was the end of a long journey for the 24-year-old from Cherry Valley, Ill., who attended Rockford Keith Country Day High School.

She walked off the court as one of the greatest volleyball players to have ever attended IU, becoming the first player in school history to have more than 1,500 kills and 1,000 digs. She finished third all-time in kills with 1,666, eighth all-time in digs with 1,034 and sixth all-time in service aces with 127.

“It’s an honor to just look back on it and know that I had an impact on the program and helped move the program forward,” Haverly said. “It’s just an honor to be in the record books with those people that have played before me and to leave a legacy for myself and reach goals I had set for myself as a freshman.”

In high school, she was named a 2008 AVCA High School Senior All-America player while leading her school to a 37-5 record and a Class 1A state runner-up finish. In her senior season alone, she had 610 kills, 203 digs, 71 blocks and 101 aces. She compiled 1,671 kills in her four years, which ranks her second all-time in Illinois Class 1A. She also was a captain all four years.

In college, Haverly was an integral part of the 2010 IU Sweet 16 team. She lead the team in kills over All-American Ashley Benson and was looking forward to an even better year in 2011 that would potentially see her become an All-American, too.

However, during a tournament in April 2011, fate took a bad turn.

As soon as her leg hit the ground, she collapsed. 

Her knee and shin pointed in opposite directions.

She heard her knee pop and immediately started calling for the trainers. She couldn’t move and said the trainer’s name over and over. She didn’t cry out. She was on the verge of tears as the pain seared through her knee.

Even when the trainers rolled her over and tried to talk to her, she told them to stop touching her.

“I came down on one leg,” Haverly said, “and basically tore everything in my knee.”

She had torn her ACL and meniscus while going for a kill and has needed four surgeries so far to fix the damage — which included wearing through the cartilage in her knee — with a fifth to come this month. It forced her to miss the entire season,
and she was placed under a medical redshirt.

As the No. 20 high school recruit in the nation, Haverly originally committed to Nebraska, but changed her mind three days before the start of the season. She said after a few weeks she started to feel unhappy and talked with some of her family members about the situation. They determined it wasn’t
homesickness.

“There wasn’t one thing that happened that made me say, ‘That’s it, I’m leaving,’” she said. “Overall, it just had a really weird feeling. I wasn’t happy, and I was stressed out and miserable the whole time. It just wasn’t the right place.” 

She spent the year taking classes at a local junior college while she continued to train on her own.

“I went out there for the summer and did all of the preseason, and then I decided that it wasn’t the right fit for me,” Haverly said. “I left literally three days before the season started and went home. That’s when I started visiting schools again to see where I was going to go.”

IU coaches got in touch with Haverly through her club coach, and after narrowing her search to Northwestern and IU, she committed to becoming a Hoosier.

“I remember the day she called, and I believe it was over Christmas, because I was at home in Tennessee,” IU Coach Sherry Dunbar said. “That was pretty much right after I got here to Indiana, so that was a huge get. It was huge for our program to have her commit to IU.”

After a long physical rehabilitation process, during which Haverly struggled to stay mentally engaged and get excited while her teammates practiced, Haverly was able to bounce back. She was a different player, with less quickness and agility than before, but she was able to adapt and become a smarter player.

“I think it made her appreciate the game even more,” Dunbar said. “Coming back and not really ever getting back to being that player that she was beforehand, but finding other ways to contribute, that’s tough. She has the best IQ of volleyball on our team.
She’s always been a very smart player.”

Having sat out two years, Haverly was older than the seniors from her junior year — a year in which she was named a captain. This sparked the team’s decision to call her
“Grandma” and poke fun at her age.

The trend continued into this season, in which she was two years older than the other three seniors, but she took it all in good fun.

“It’s interesting. I feel like a mom a lot of the time,” Haverly said. “But it’s fun.

Everybody calls me Grandma, but I’m used to it. It’s a funny running joke that we have, because I’m pretty sure I’m one of the oldest volleyball players in the NCAA right now. I like being able to help everybody out and use the knowledge that I have from being here and around the sport for so long. I laugh at it because it is funny. There are days where I’m sore and I literally look like an old lady compared to everybody else.”

With her college career over, Haverly has new dreams and aspirations. She is getting her master’s degree in recreational therapy in May to go along with her bachelor’s degree in exercise scienceand hopes to pursue a short career in professional volleyball in Europe before returning to the NCAA as a coach.

“It’s probably not the best for me to do that, but depending how my MRI looks, you never know, I might be able to convince the doctors to let me have one year,” Haverly said. “If the opportunity is there and I get the clear from the doctors, I would definitely go play.”

In her time at IU, Haverly has affected the volleyball program not just through her accolades and records, but as a person. Her legacy is now embedded in the record books, as well as the players that will return.

“She is such a mom,” Dunbar said. “The memories I have of her are the maturity she brought to the program, how she always took people under her wing individually and how we’d try to get other players to do things the right way because Jordan did them that way.”