SPANISH FORT, Ala. — Cailyn Boykin cannot remember a time when volleyball was not part of her life, and she cannot entirely settle on what to call her head coach.
“That was a long time ago,” Cailyn said when asked when she first started to gain an interest in volleyball. “It was probably like volley-tots, like a grassroots kind of thing. And obviously, [her mom] started me super young. I mean, there’s pictures of me, I was a baby, and I was riding in the ball carts and stuff like that. So volleyball has definitely been in my blood since a very young age.”
Mom or Coach Boykin
The mother-daughter relationship layered into a coach-player environment creates an unusual dynamic for the pair.
“In the gym, I have to be like, OK, do I call her Mom? Do I call her Coach Boykin? It can be weird sometimes,” Cailyn admitted, at times referring to her mother as Coach Boykin. “Has she gotten onto me — don’t call me Mom in the gym. That’s her joke.”
The solution they arrived at is entirely nonverbal.
“It feels wrong to call her Mom on the court, but to me it also feels wrong to call her Coach Boykin,” Cailyn said. “So a lot of times I’ll just clap and get her attention. And she goes [pointing, waving] and I clap, and she’ll emerge. She’s like, ‘OK, what do you want?’”
Whatever They’re Doing, It Works
Cailyn, a senior, and her teammates are chasing a third consecutive state championship, having won the Alabama High School Athletic Association Class 6A title the past two years.
With the realignment of AHSAA classifications separating public and private schools in state championship competition, Spanish Fort is now a Class 5A team and is considered a strong contender for the title.
She is in her fourth season on the Toros’ varsity roster. In a recent win over Tate High School of Pensacola, she produced 43 assists, eight digs and three aces.
Her career numbers with the Toros stand at 3,859 assists, 230 aces, 921 digs and 216 kills, according to statistics.
The assist total is the figure that defines her role. A setter touches the ball on nearly every offensive sequence, and an assist requires a teammate to convert — meaning a four-year total approaching 4,000 reflects both individual consistency and a program producing sustained offensive output.
Growing Up in the Gym
“Since I’ve been growing up, I’ve been in the gym with [her mom] and the teams that she’s created, I’ve been in there with them,” Cailyn said. “And that’s when my love for volleyball started. So just getting to hang out with those girls and them embracing me into their family, I thought that was super cool. Then obviously the state championships and just everything that we created in those moments, it’s just so electric and so exciting. So those are a few of my favorite moments.”
The Target on Their Backs
Being part of a successful program can create stressful moments and a fair share of pressure regardless of the relationship one has with a coach. Cailyn said she has enjoyed being part of the Spanish Fort program and is happy to experience the pressure that winning creates.
“There definitely is some pressure,” she said. “We know that being a two-time state champion that we obviously have a target on our backs, and every team we play is going to want to play their best to try to beat us. So we know that every match we go into, we can’t be overconfident and we still have to play like we know how to play. So there is a little pressure, but we’ve been in those situations, so we definitely know how to handle it.”
A Program Built From Nothing
Gretchen Boykin, recently inducted into the Alabama Volleyball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, built the Toros’ program from the ground up.
“I love my team. I love the players. I love the school and the atmosphere,” she said. “It’s just been a great place to be. It was really fun going into Spanish Fort, a team that had never won a state championship, and kind of getting to build my own culture. I think we’ve done a really good job of that there.”
“The girls really buy into that culture and they’re really driven by the things that we play for,” she said. “And just watching them grow through the years, it’s been really neat. We talk a lot about culture in our program and what we want to do and just seeing the players that have moved on from high school, some of them have brought the things that we do at Spanish Fort to their college teams. So that’s always rewarding and very cool to see.”
A Small Town’s Advantage
Gretchen Boykin pointed to something structural about where the program is located.
“The players, it’s just a great group of kids, and they love volleyball,” she said. “I think another really big part of it is that Spanish Fort is a small community, and so they grew up going to school together, so their chemistry with each other, they know each other very well and they’ve played together for a long time. But it’s not just that they play together, but they really love each other.”
That observation gets at something coaches in smaller communities often describe as their genuine competitive edge. A roster assembled from players who have been on the same court since elementary school arrives with years of accumulated familiarity — anticipation, spacing, timing — that a program drawing from a larger and more transient population has to build from scratch every season.
One Last Year
Although she did not grow up in Spanish Fort, Cailyn said the community and school have become home.
“Since I’ve gotten here, I love the community,” she said. “I love all the people. I mean, the program, I’ve made so many friends and everything. So it’s incredible. … I’m excited to hopefully bring another state championship to our team and just getting to spend one last year with these girls. It’s been amazing to get to spend so much time with them, and I just love this group. So I’m excited to hopefully win [a state title] again.”