Dominican senior volleyball player Cayla Morphew prepares for life after her time on the court

Courtesy Dominican University of California Sports Information

SAN RAFAEl, CA - For senior OH Cayla Morphew (Rohnert Park, CA/Rancho Cotate), it was her last road trip with her Penguin volleyball teammates and it was to Hawai‘i. Her parents had joined her there. Her team won its first match of the season.

All was good.

Then Morphew had to leave them all behind. She boarded a flight to the Mainland to complete a mandatory nursing clinical at San Francisco General Hospital followed by consecutive days of mandatory certification classes in Oakland.

Good-bye, paradise. Hello, reality.

However, if there is one thing Morphew has learned in her four-year volleyball career at Dominican, you have to be quick on your feet. That’s a quality she will carry with her into her nursing career.

“This is perfect,” Morphew said, smiling. “I’m very prepared.”

As Morphew readied for the final volleyball match of her Dominican career vs. California Baptist in the Conlan Center, she thought back to her four-year stint knowing she met the difficult challenge of being a student-athlete presented with the demands that come with being a nursing student in a reputed program.

“I’ve dedicated 10 years to volleyball. It’s been a huge chunk of my life. It’s going to be a chapter of my life closing,” Morphew said. “But I’m also excited because now I can start a new career. That was my volleyball career and now I can start my nursing career.”

Morphew’s Dominican volleyball career began when, as a senior at Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park,  her Absolute Volleyball Club teammates in Marin – Gabby Pecora and Brooke Swingle – convinced her to join them playing volleyball with the Penguins.

Morphew had an interest in nursing – her grandmother Roberta was a nurse – so Dominican seemed like a great fit.

In her freshman year, when she commuted daily to school from Rohnert Park, she led the team in sets played and blocks. Last year she had a career-high 19 kills in a match and was named to the PacWest Academic All-Conference team.

But the highlight of Morphew’s career came as a sophomore when she had eight kills, eight digs and two service aces in helping the Penguins defeat Academy of Art for their first NCAA Division II victory.

Otherwise, Morphew’s time at Dominican has been a blur of ups and downs and comings and goings. Running from class to get to practices and games on time.

“It’s hard. But I find it’s really useful,” Morphew said. “ I’m sure in the future, especially in nursing, there are going to be times when I’m not sure what’s going to be going on with my schedule and how to deal with things. I’ll have to resort back to my time management skills. I have to be so organized. I make lists of everything I have to do every day.”

Leaving Hawai‘i in the middle of a road trip was not at the top of her to-do list, but Morphew managed to pull herself away and do her duty. Her parents, Pat and Phil, drove her to the Honolulu airport for her flight home. They stayed and watch the Penguins play on the North Shore and the Big Island while their daughter put in her time on a 12-hour shift filling out reports, giving medication and injections, and doing general nursing procedures in a hospital.

“It was sad for me,” Morphew said. “It felt like I was abandoning them.”

Fortunately, Morphew’s mother sent texts to her daughter with every scoring update and lineup change in the games at BYU-Hawaii and Hawai‘i Hilo, and teammates Ashlee Sand and Katy Batchelder provided texts with post-game commentary.

Of course, Morphew was coming off eight-hour classes in Advanced Cardio Life Support in Oakland and falling into bed when she got home in San Rafael. She longed to be back in Hawai‘i, providing senior leadership, but she had to rely on messages to keep her connected.

“I was really exhausted at night, even at 10 o’clock,” Morphew said. “They were texting me at one in the morning after the game. I wouldn’t look at them until the next day.”

Morphew can reflect on the friendships she has made and the life skills and patience she has acquired as a student-athlete.

“Cayla has made the transition from NAIA to a higher level of competition in the NCAA and made the transition to a new coach all in a short period of time - and that’s not easy,” Gayle Stammer, Dominican's second-year head volleyball coach, said. “I appreciate all of her hard work and dedication to the volleyball program here and admire how she has succeeded as an outstanding student-athlete. I’m really proud of her.”

Morphew now shifts her focus to studying for the NCLEX exam next semester before possibly pursuing her master's degree to become a nurse anesthetist, which means she would need two to three years of ICU or CCU experience.

Volleyball, in some way, has prepared her for that.