The NC State volleyball team got out to a rough start in the fall season before rallying and winning four straight to close the season. Under first-year head coach Luka Slabe, the team was able to show a sense of resilience that it wasn’t able to last season, when the Pack finished 11-19.

Much of that resilience and success is due to the upperclassmen on the team, players who went through the coaching change and are able to guide the younger players on the team amidst a season plagued by COVID-19.

“I think as far as leadership, we’ve definitely been working with that,” said junior opposite hitter Jade Parchment. “How to bring each other all up together…just being able to have those conversations with one another and push each other to the best of our ability. We talk about accountability a lot and being able to hold each other to the high standard of volleyball that we’re trying to play at and compete against.”

As one of the leaders of the Pack, and one of the most underrated players on the roster, Parchment had an outright dominant fall season and improved in each game, putting up outlandish stats across the board.

“One of the things that Luka [Slabe] and our entire coaching staff is harping on us for and specifically me is being more disciplined,” Parchment said. “And going from the club level to the collegiate level and being able to play under somebody who is able to coach us at that sort of technical level, discipline is something I’ve really been working hard at in my offseason. The little things that you wouldn’t think to pay attention to, that at the end of the day, make a huge difference.”

Parchment led the team in kills with 118 through eight games in the fall semester, while also leading the team in points with 131.5. Parchment also led the team in attacking errors with 44, tied with senior opposite hitter Melissa Evans, but she was able to cut down on those numbers in the second half of the season. Parchment had just nine total errors across three of the final four games of the season, outside of the team’s second win against Virginia.

“Early in the fall, she was struggling with taking swings,” Slabe said. “She’s very dynamic, athletic with a big arm, but she took a lot of swings that hurt her and our team. But if you go back and look at those last four matches…there’s a huge difference in efficiency and it’s not because she’s jumping higher and hitting harder, but the decisions she was making on offense were different…level of maturity [improved].”

The star outside hitter’s statistics were good enough to move her into the record books. Parchment earned ACC Player of the Week in the fall season, the first time such a feat was accomplished by an NC State player since 2017. Parchment also moved into 10th place all-time for career kills at NC State while finishing the season ranked fourth in the conference and 17th nationally for kills.

“I would say, in addition to discipline, definitely thoughtfulness, not just doing things mindlessly,” Parchment said. “Having an attention to every single swing, every single dig and that thought process has definitely been one of my major areas of improvement the past couple of years.”

Despite an unusual fall season and having a limited offseason due to COVID-19, Parchment jumped from 2.8 kills per set and 2.57 kills per set in 2018 and 2019, respectively, to a whopping 4.21 kills per set in 2020, which led the team.

Her augmentation of personal statistics across each year Parchment has been at NC State is just one testament of her character and what she brings to the team on and off the court.

“[Parchment]’s a little bit unpredictable, sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get out of her,” Slabe said. “But then she does something and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s an elite move,’ or ‘That’s an elite swing…’ But she has this goofiness in herself, she’s this gooftball, TikTok dancing moves, just fun. But she’s unpredictable and I like to have a little bit of unpredictable players on the team, in a good sense…Jade never let us down, she was always where we needed her to be not just on but also off the court for us and for the team. So she’s absolutely a good girl to have around.”

Behind players like Parchment, redshirt junior defensive specialist/libero Kaylee Frazier, Evans and middleblockers junior Pam Chukwujekwu and redshirt senior Mmachi Nwoke, the team has been able to undergo a cultural reset and set the standards of what high-level competition is supposed to look like.

“I think one of the greatest things about our new coaching staff is we’re always talking about open and honest communication,” Parchment said. “We’ve eliminated this whole idea that there’s this hierarchy; we’re all working towards one main goal together. If there are any issues with our coaching staff, we can go to them with that and vice versa. For the upperclassmen, that’s the culture that we’re trying to implement with the rest of our team…we’re all trying to achieve the same thing. We’re all equal and we’re all leaders in our own ways.”

Alongside her peers, Parchment has been able to step up individually as a leader, becoming a more vocal presence on the court.

“I think one of the biggest things this program has helped me with is stepping outside of my comfort zone,” Parchment said. “Pushing myself to do things and say things that I definitely would not have my freshman year…the culture we’ve been implementing has really encouraged me and everyone else to step outside themselves in order to be what everyone needs from one another.”

With Parchment and the upperclassmen set to depart the program following the 2021 fall/2022 spring season, Parchment is hopeful their contributions to the program will be felt for years to come.

“Like I said before, the team is everything,” Parchment said. “Through adversity and through all the challenges, the fact that this group of people has always been there for me, and the way we can be there for each other, that stood out to me amongst any other school that I was being recruited by. I hope those connections and the type of leader that I’m trying to be. I hope that’s going to leave a lasting impression when I leave for sure.”