MONTICELLO – Carly Hill doesn't remember it clearly, but she has a reliable source who confirms the first sport she pursued.

"According to my mom, I could swim before I could walk," Hill said.

By the time she was in junior high, Hill was a three-sport athlete, with most of her time devoted to either volleyball and basketball.

"I liked basketball because it was more of a contact sport and felt kind of wild compared to volleyball with a civilized net between opponents," she said.

When it came time to specialize, however, there really was no choice.

"Volleyball was more fun for me and I never got tired of even the mundane practices where repetitions were endless and you jump until your legs give out.

"I like the reckless abandon you have to harness to play volleyball. It requires a lot of skill, mentally and physically, that doesn't really come naturally. You have to play both with a lot of control and really aggressively to do it well."

Let the record show, she played volleyball very, very well.

The Monticello High School graduate was one of two athletes to earn Area Player of the Year honors twice in the past 10 years and was a narrow choice as News-Gazette Player of the Decade over the other two-time recipient, Clinton's Kylie McCulley.

"I can't believe my luck in being chosen," Hill said. "I just love playing and somehow was able to get a little better at the sport as I went. Our area has a long history of good athletes, and I feel really lucky to be considered among them."

Perhaps she could have been better. In hindsight, she recognizes a piece of advice she didn't follow up on might have been beneficial.

If she could retrace her career, Hill said, "perhaps I would have run 3 miles every day for my basic cardio training, like my dad suggested," she said.

Volleyball was more than a sport in which she excelled. It was also one which the entire family enjoyed.

"The great part was that even though we were always busy, my family would take me to tournaments, play with me in the backyard, come with me to go on runs or lift weights, so we would end up doing all of this stuff together," she said. "I love having three siblings (including brother Austin) because someone could always be talked into playing with you."

She has devoted the majority of her life to volleyball and is already planning a summer schedule that will include some beach volleyball.

"I've played since second grade, when my sisters Kate and Meg picked up the sport," Hill said. "I tagged along to all of their practices and they let me run around and play with them and their friends when they practiced at home.

"I jump-served because Kate did, and I started it when she did."

Carly Hill became so competent with it that in her first collegiate match at Clemson, she not only started as a true freshman but also had the chance to serve on her first play in a tournament at Pepperdine University.

"My first play was to jump-serve," she said. "I remember being really relieved that I made it over and lived to play another rally."

After graduating from Clemson with a bachelor's degree in integrative biology with a minor in chemistry, Hill enrolled at the University of Illinois as a graduate student in geology. She is doing research on the coral reef response to changing sea surface temperatures.

Even with the time spent in a laboratory accompanied by a microscope or in the classroom teaching, volleyball is not far from Hill's mind.

"I suppose we drank the volleyball Kool-Aid at a young age and never looked back," she said. "I never really mastered it, but I loved the pursuit of perfection in a game of mistakes."