By Ashton Pollard
Associate Athletics Communications Director
TOLEDO, Ohio — “G-O-S-Y-D-1-2.”
Those seven characters were impossible to miss for those visiting Savage Arena at the University of Toledo on Sunday. The Irish were the visitors, but it was like home for junior Sydney Palazzolo, whose several cousins in attendance held up her name and number to show support for the Irish outside hitter.
Palazzolo, who hails from outside of Detroit, played Sunday’s match just 90 miles from her hometown of Shelby Township, Mich. More than two dozen family members showed up to support her, just as they have throughout her first year in South Bend. Palazzolo spent her first two seasons at High Point University before deciding to return to the Midwest.
“It means so much to have my family close by,” Palazzolo said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it when I played at a school farther away. Coming closer to home, so much of my family has gotten to come see me play already, and it’s still non-conference [play]. It’s always fun getting to say hi to family after the game. Sometimes I get homesick, so it’s nice that my family can come here because it makes it feel more like home.”
When her family makes the trek — whether it’s to Toledo, South Bend or beyond — they surely get a show. Through just eight matches, Palazzolo has separated herself from the pack and become one of the best players in the ACC. She leads the conference with 4.5 kills and 5.1 points per set. An ACC player has recorded 23 kills or more in a game just seven times this year, and Palazzolo is responsible for three of them. No other player has more than one.
“Sydney is one of the best all-around players that we’ve had here,” Head Coach Salima Rockwell said. “She does everything at a high level. Being able to leave her in for six rotations has been huge for us. She attacks at a high level, she passes really well, we can keep her in the back row and get offense out of her there. She has one of the best serves on the team, probably in the conference.
“She’s really, really good at everything.”
‘I knew volleyball was the one’
Rockwell, who is in her second season at the helm in South Bend, recognizes an elite talent when she sees one. A Penn State three-time All-American and four-time national champion, she was brought to Notre Dame to get the Irish over the hump in one of the nation’s best volleyball conferences. Utilizing the transfer portal would need to be a huge piece of her recruiting to jump-start the process, and she hit the jackpot with Palazzolo, the 2022 Big South Player of the Year.
“We started having conversations with her and looked up her videos from High Point,” Rockwell said of the recruitment process. “We saw her play against USC in the NCAA Tournament, and she went off. Then you talk to her, and she’s just a joy. We knew it would be a good fit.”
Rockwell soon learned that she had a previously unknown connection to her new outside hitter Palazzolo, too. Palazzolo’s cousin Kate Price played under Rockwell at Penn State and graduated in 2008. Price had a massive influence on Palazzolo, even if it wasn’t clear at the time.
“All of my cousins set the track for me,” Palazzolo said. “I was going to volleyball games before I could even remember going to volleyball games. I grew up playing a couple of sports, but I always knew volleyball was the one.”
Palazzolo is able to stuff the stat sheet match in and match out, but she brings so much more to Notre Dame. She has family at nearly every match, creating a home-y environment for a team made up of women from across the nation.
“It’s awesome seeing all of the people with the signs,” Rockwell said. “To have that kind of investment in the team, it’s huge for our program.”
‘It’s baffling to me’
Palazzolo is now piloting a ship with NCAA Tournament aspirations, and she’s making everyone around her better. With her help, the Irish are 6-2 heading into conference play with wins over Oklahoma and Illinois and remain undefeated at Purcell Pavilion.
“Sydney brings a consistency we’ve been missing,” Rockwell said. “She hasn’t stepped off the court, even in practice. There’s an air of confidence, quiet confidence, that I believe makes everyone always feel like everything is okay. She can handle the pressure. She’s unphased. She’s the glue holding it all down. It’s baffling to me.”
In total, Palazzolo has 164.5 points thus far, 31.5 percent of Notre Dame’s point total this year. She tied a career high with 25 kills against the Sooners and is on pace to rank third in school history in kills per set. No Irish player has cracked the top 8 in that category since the turn of the century.
But you won’t hear about the impressive individual statistics from Palazzolo. The bragging about her work is limited to her head coach and teammates. She just wants to be a piece of the puzzle.
“It was very exciting to see those performances when playing against really good teams like Oklahoma and other Big 12 teams, Big Ten teams,” Palazzolo said when asked about her performances thus far. “It’s awesome to see that everything we are doing is crossing over regardless of who is on the other side of the net.”
But there’s still work to be done if the group wants to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2020. Rockwell cautions her team not to look too far ahead, as the Irish still have to face three top-15 teams in No. 5 Louisville, No. 8 Pittsburgh and No. 13 Georgia Tech.
It’s one game at a time for a cool, calm and collected Palazzolo. And it begins with defeating Boston College on Friday night.