Be Where Your Feet Are
Alex Semadeni
When Boise State beach volleyball student-athlete Makayla Dimond was a child, she had her sights set on becoming a pilot. Inspired by the legendary Amelia Earhart, she had dreams of an adult life flying the high skies.
As she reached high school, her plans shifted and she began laying the groundwork to become a firefighter. Dimond wanted an active lifestyle while also finding a career where she could make an impact on others.
She shared her dreams with the beach volleyball coaching staff at Boise State during her recruitment process, and when she committed following her junior year of high school, she began registering for classes to go down that path.
Her dreams shifted once again the summer before she left for college.
It was at that time when her grandmother, Gayle, moved into her bedroom. At the time, Gayle’s mental cognition was poor and it was difficult for her to maintain full conversations and get around the house. Dimond was eager to lend a helping hand for her grandma, and took over caregiving duties in a nurse-like role. Dimond would wake up each morning and walk up to her old bedroom to help her grandma get dressed, take her medications and get prepared for the day.
“It was really cool,” Dimond said. “Not only did I get to spend a lot of quality time with her, but I felt very purposeful with what I got to do.”
Before she left for college, her grandmother wrote her a note that stays with Dimond to this day.
“She wrote me this note that basically told me to love myself because I have a special gift of reaching out and helping others regardless of their age,” Diamond said. “I keep that note next to my desk and it’s a big motivator. I want to strive and feel that same sense of purpose I felt when getting to care for her.”
Caring for her grandmother inspired Dimond down the path of pursuing a nursing degree. When she arrived at Boise State in the fall of 2022, she decided to stay on her firefighting dream and major in kinesiology, as the prerequisites for both kinesiology and nursing were the same. She allowed herself to see what each major had to offer before narrowing down her focus.
Dimond was also allowing herself time to make the adjustment to the life of a college athlete. She was a late bloomer to the sport, joining her high school’s beach volleyball during the pandemic. Dimond actually despised the sport at first, but grew fond of playing in the sand after being paired with her sister.
As one of seven newcomers of a talented freshman class, Dimond, who goes by Mickey to her teammates, was ready to embrace the collegiate schedule. She made an immediate impact on the coaching staff with her coachability, work ethic and of course, her talent.
“It was really clear that her main goal was to come in and become a better beach volleyball player,” said Allision Voigt, Boise State beach volleyball’s head coach. “She was clearly a high-achiever and was such a sponge. She took in so much information and was all about the coaching - she wanted more and more. She is one of the easiest people to coach because she takes in everything you say and is willing to do anything to be better.”
During her freshman campaign, the Broncos underwent the most successful season in program history (at the time), finishing the year with a 25-10 record. In the program’s first season as members of the Southland Conference, the Broncos finished as runners-up at the SLC Championship after falling in the championship dual to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, 3-1.
As the team saw success on the sand, Dimond was pleasantly surprised about finding a routine between juggling practice and academics. In the classroom, she continued leaning into the nursing major.
“I just kept learning more about nursing and, this will sound weird, but I realized that I am a lot smarter than I thought I was initially,” Dimond said. “I realized that this was totally something that I'm capable of and just grew more and more interested.”
There was one major problem with transitioning fully to the major. Nursing, already known for being a challenging major, requires mandatory clinicals, which are hands-on training in healthcare settings where students apply their skills in real patient care situations. Those demands presented a major challenge for a Boise State student-athlete playing a sport that not only has practice every weekday, but two months of consistent weekend travel in-season.
Since the pandemic, no Boise State student-athlete - no matter the sport - has graduated with a nursing degree. Some student-athletes initially tried the major but backed out due to the time commitment, while several others have come back after their athletic eligibility was up to finish the degree.
Dimond was undeterred, however. She met with Alissa Lauer, the academic advisor for the beach volleyball team, following her freshman year to discuss the route ahead.
“I told her that we don’t have many student-athletes that do nursing because of the time they cannot miss due to clinical hours,” Lauer said. “Nursing is a major that is hard to pull off with everything else she has going on. We just had a conversation about meeting with the people in the nursing program to really understand what the curriculum would entail. They told us they were willing to work with us, but that those requirements were there for a reason.”
Next up was a conversation with the coaching staff. For a lot of freshman student-athletes, that conversation could be daunting and intimidating. Not for Dimond.
One of the staples of the Boise State beach volleyball program is its commitment to biweekly meetings between the coaching staff and each individual athlete. The idea is for the coaching staff and each individual student-athlete to have a scheduled time to discuss what is going on in each student’s life.
“Communication is always something that you have to have in life, so we wanted to build a way to always stay connected with our girls,” Voigt said. “Our assistant coach Alex Venardos brought up the idea a couple of years ago as a way to build more trust and dialogue with our group. We want to make sure that we’re there to support our team not just as coaches but as people as well. At this stage in their life there is so much change and so much growth and I want them to be comfortable bringing stuff up - the good and the bad. We just want to create an opportunity for as much dialogue as possible. I want to make sure they know they’re supported and we can help them if we can.”
Dimond had been a part of the biweekly meetings her entire freshman season, so the topic of her desire to pursue a nursing major wasn’t foreign to the coaching staff. With the decision made up firmly in her mind, she wasn’t nervous for the meeting.
“They were just so positive about it,” Dimond said. “I expected a little bit of a conversation about changing my role on the team, but they were pretty clear that they didn’t want me to worry about that and that that wasn’t going to happen. They wanted me to keep doing what I was doing and were just ready to work through it with me. They were just so supportive right from the jump. We’ve had good communication since I got here about my goals in life and they’ve always been receptive to what I want to achieve while I’m here. They just want me to keep them in the loop. Compared to a lot of other teams, I feel so grateful that our coaches do it the way they do.”
“We were super open with her when she was looking at nursing,” Voigt said. “We’ve never really had a nursing major in our program so we didn’t really know the process. Mickey was very upfront and communicative about wanting to pursue this from the beginning. She had so many career goals in front of her, and we just communicated back that we’ll be learning a lot about this process with you. Let’s just keep this dialogue open as much as possible and tackle it all together.”
Their weekly meetings consisted of a healthy balance of coaching instruction but also nursing school updates. Once Mickey was accepted into the program (which alone is no easy task) and both sides learned the specifics of the time commitment, Dimond and the coaching staff reached an easy resolution based on constant communication.
Each week, Dimond texts the coaches her class schedule and what days of practice she is planning to miss. With that knowledge, the coaching staff adjusts the week’s practice plans accordingly, while Dimond fills in her schedule with the program’s weekly requirements, such as lifts and biweekly meetings.
“This semester there's a lot more class conflicts,” Dimond said. “On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, my classes are at different times each week. On Thursdays, I have clinicals all day, so I'm not able to make it to weights on that day. Instead I do my lifts independently on Wednesdays. It's fun because our strength coach Jack is so fun, so I really don’t mind, but I definitely would prefer to do it with the team because of the comradery. I’m thankful that my coaches and support staff will adjust their schedules to make sure I’m hitting all the same benchmarks. I'm just so grateful that they're just so flexible with it.”
On top of the missed practices, Dimond also misses a lot of road trips with the team. She missed about half the team trips as a sophomore, and this season was unable to attend the team’s first three weekends of competition of the 2025 season.
Her scheduled cleared up for her to join the squad for the SLC Midseason Tournament from March 26-28 in Thibodaux, La., where she picked up her first win of the season against Nicholls State with a 21-14, 21-7 win from the No. 5 position alongside partner Avery Bowidowciz. Dimond was there for the moment the Broncos took down Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to secure the program’s first regular season conference championship in program history, and traveled to Utah last weekend for the Utah Beach Classic.
Though she misses a lot of practice, the coaching staff has been extremely intentional about making sure it is clear that she still feels a part of the team. On top of nursing school updates, her biweekly meetings still consist of film work, with the staff working through ways to improve as a beach player.
“They’ve done a really good job,” she said. “The staff really keeps me accountable about still having a role on the team. It could have been easy with missing some practices and a lot of the travel to take a step back and be there just for the vibes. They are intentional about not wanting me to be a passive participant because it’s not beneficial for the team’s growth. Coach Luna especially has challenged me to show up as a unique character that will come into practice and throw people off. He wants whoever is across the net from me to change their gameplay to match what I’m doing. He wants me to make scrappy, loose plays that really challenge the team. I really enjoy it and playing with a stress-free mind has made me play better personally, and it’s more fun too.”
From an academic advisor’s perspective, Lauer is impressed by the way the coaching staff spends time developing their players as people, something she believes is unique in the collegiate athletic business.
“It’s pretty cool how supportive the beach staff is,” Lauer said. “They want you to be good at beach volleyball and develop you as an athlete. They want to win a lot of games. But at the same time they’re really prioritizing developing their student-athletes as people. Mickey is a great example of that. They just have such a great perspective in terms of that this person that they're working with isn't just a beach volleyball player and that there's a future out there beyond beach volleyball. They do such a great job of supporting all their players in that sense.”
It’s easy to point to the success of the beach program over the past few seasons and see the growth that has occurred under Voigt’s tenure. Under her leadership, Boise State has evolved into a household program in the collegiate beach volleyball world, having received votes in the AVCA Collegiate Beach Poll in each of the last three seasons. However underneath all the success seen on the court, her passion for developing her players as true student-athletes is on display.
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— Boise State Beach Volleyball (@BroncoSportsBVB) March 15, 2025
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“I'm a full believer that collegiate athletics shouldn’t take people away from their passion or what they want to do career-wise,” Voigt said. “Yes I’m a coach, and believe me I want to win as much as possible. I want this program to compete at a national level. But I also see this role as a mentor, someone that can make an impact on a young woman’s life. Seeing someone like Mickey who is so passionate about wanting to help people, I have to help her grow in that aspect. That’s really important to me. Mickey especially was so communicative about it early-on that we knew we had to help her achieve what she wants to achieve in her life.”
As the season and clinicals concurrently drag on, Dimond was pleasantly surprised with how low her stress levels were as she attempted to balance her busy schedule.
“I thought once I started nursing it would be chaotic balancing both beach and nursing. But what I was shocked about is that maintaining the beach definitely made it easier for me. I already had such a strict schedule with what I was doing because of the demands of beach volleyball that the time for the other stuff fell in place. I was already forced to take care of myself. It’s definitely hard and takes a lot of discipline, but I was expecting a bit more stress if I’m being honest. But being a part of a team, I’m forced to work out. I’m forced to be in the sun. I get my social interaction at practice and when we hang out outside. I’ve figured out the best times to study. I’ve figured out how to balance everything because that structure was already there. It’s actually made it better for me.”Makayla Dimond
On the flip side, Dimond has credited her experience as an athlete in helping her navigate the natural anxieties that one experiences in a working capacity.
“Having my background in beach and then starting nursing has just been a good experience,” she said. “I know how to communicate and use teamwork in stressful situations. My freshman year, that was definitely something that was hard for me. There’s so much pressure when it’s just you and your partner out there on the court. How do you respond when you’re playing bad? How do you work together as a team? That was something that I realized really quickly working in the hospital. I’m working with a lot of different types of people and how you compose yourself and what you do is really important. It’s cool having that experience from beach and having it be not as serious as life and death, but having that experience for something more serious.”
As Voigt has watched Dimond balance her busy schedule the past few years, she is not surprised in the slightest that the junior has been able to figure out a way to successfully juggle all of her responsibilities.
“The last couple of years she's been on the team, she's realized that just being in the moment helps a ton,” Voigt said. “When you don’t bring anything else you perform at your best as an athlete. She's done such a good job of separating her schooling and coursework and how stressful that can be when she comes for practice. She just has so much passion about the sport and you just can’t not be impacted by her joy. It’s so contagious and impressive because we know that she has so much going on.”
With a month of season left, Dimond knows it's grind time. The Sandy Broncos will have two guaranteed weekends of competition left in the season, beginning with the Boise State Beach Classic, April 11-13, at the Boise State Beach Volleyball Complex. The Broncos will look to punch their ticket to the national tournament by winning the SLC Championship, which takes place from April 23-25 in New Orleans. Just as the pressure rises on the sand, the intensity doesn’t slow down in the slightest in the classroom.
Still though, Dimond relishes the opportunity she has been presented with.
“I'm grateful to have had the experience that I've had with it so far,” Dimond said. “Even the tools I’ve added when I’m stressed out. My coaches are really adamant that I need to be where my feet are. When my feet are in the sand, be in that moment. When I’m out on the court, be fully there and fully present. When I’m in the hospital, I am there and not worried about anything else. It’s been an extremely helpful mindset that I wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t undergone this experience.”
