Volleyball began shaping senior Allison Zastrow’s life even before she was born.

That’s what came from having two parents with season tickets to the University of Nebraska’s top-tier program—that, and a name inspired by Nebraska star Allison Weston, who was in the process of making her way to the top of her school’s record book when Zastrow was born.

Photo courtesy of Allison Zastrow

Senior Allison Zastrow (left) sits in the lap of University of Nebraska volleyball great Allison Weston in 1994. Zastrow’s parents have season tickets to Nebraska volleyball, and they named their daughter after the Cornhuskers’ best player.

Zastrow might not be on Weston’s level—she’d need an Olympic berth and a national player of the year award to meet that lofty comparison—but she’s starring on the court in her own right as the setter for Washington University’s third-ranked volleyball team.

Not that she necessarily thinks of her play in those terms.

“I see my role as definitely facilitating what’s going on, just sort of taking the ball from the passers and giving it to the hitters,” Zastrow said. “It’s certainly less about what I’m doing and more about how they find the court no matter what.”

Zastrow said she doesn’t pay much attention to her statistics—although her dad “knows all of them. He has spreadsheets on spreadsheets…It’s kind of terrifying, actually,” she admitted—but the numbers depict a metronomic consistency: 55 assists in a four-set triumph over the University of Chicago; 61 in a five-set comeback against Carthage College; and back-to-back matches with 50-plus in mid-October.

Overall, those numbers add up almost to a national best: Through the games of Nov. 4, Zastrow ranks second in Division III with 11.65 assists per set.

That quantitative success is more a testament to what her teammates do with her sets, Zastrow noted.

“Setting isn’t really a numbers sort of thing,” she explained. “Like hitters, you can tell how well somebody’s doing by their [hitting] percentage, whereas setting, it’s a lot more dependent upon everything else. I mean, I wouldn’t have so many assists if I didn’t have so many people who put the ball away all the time.”

But it’s more of a reciprocal relationship, her teammates and coach say. Zastrow “is able to distribute the ball really well, and that makes it so much easier for our hitters,” senior middle hitter Jackie Nelligan said. “If we can tell her what we’re seeing from our perspective, she can use that to then place the ball to our advantage.”

“The attackers always get a lot of credit for all the kills that they get and they’re always the ones finishing the point,” head coach Vanessa Walby added, “but you always need the setter to get them a pretty ball, and I don’t think setters get that credit sometimes.”

But Zastrow deserves credit for both her setting and her mentality on the court, Walby noted.

“Al is a really strong athlete,” the coach said. “I don’t think she ever has a panic mentality to her— she stays pretty relaxed, pretty comfortable, but she’s also one of our players that probably is the most fundamentally sound.”

Zastrow developed those fundamentals from a lifetime of volleyball viewing and playing: She began attending University of Nebraska games just after her birth and started her own career in the fifth grade.

“Volleyball has just always been my thing,” Zastrow explained.

Nebraska is a “hotbed” for youth volleyball players, she said, and her high school, Lincoln Pius X High School, was no exception: The setter who preceded Zastrow played varsity ball at both UCLA and Nebraska, and Zastrow herself led the team to three straight state semifinal appearances, including the title her senior year.

Allison Hamburg | Student Life

Zastrow prepares to serve in the Bears’ game against Cornell College on Sept. 12. During her time at Wash. U., Zastrow has played right side, setter, defensive specialist and middle on the volleyball team.

At Wash. U., Zastrow branched out from the setter position, instead shuttling around the court across her four years as a Bear.

In her freshman year alone, Zastrow played at right side, setter, defensive specialist and “one glorious match at middle,” she remembered. Since then, she’s alternated by year: predominantly setter as a sophomore, right side as a junior and setter again her senior season.

She welcomed the flexibility and especially enjoyed the newfound opportunity to hit—last year, Zastrow ranked fourth on the Bears with 329 kills.

“I’ve always loved hitting, so for me, it was just a lot of fun to be able to go up and swing at the ball as hard as I wanted to,” she said.

Still, returning to setting full-time as a senior was “sort of like riding a bike,” she said, and passing to hitters she’s played with for years helped with the adjustment.

That familiarity has paid dividends: The same six upperclassmen have started for the Bears in each match this season, and the five besides Zastrow all boast more than 275 kills on better than 2.5 kills per set.

“When you try to scout against us, it’s really hard to pick players out that are the key players,” Walby said. “Most teams have one or two attackers, and we have four or five that are really good, so I think it’s really hard to play against us.”

In addition to softening up the defense, this versatility has the advantage of easing Zastrow’s job.

“I can be anywhere on the court and I can throw the ball up anywhere, and somebody will go up and attack it,” Zastrow added. “I really love having that many hitters out on the court at a time because nobody’s going to be able to predict what we’re doing”

The one part of the Bears’ offense that is predictable is that it will collect kills—and lots of them. The team ranks first in Division III in kills per set, second in assists per set and fifth in hitting percentage. Conference rival and national No. 1 Emory University is the only other school with top-five marks in each of those categories.

This coming weekend, Zastrow and the Bears travel to Rochester, N.Y., as the second seed, behind Emory, in the University Athletic Association tournament, the stage is set for Zastrow to help guide the Bears past their longtime rival—both on the national leaderboard and on the court—with the team seeking its first conference title since 2011.

The weekend after that, the Division III national tournament begins, with Wash. U. looking to end a six-year championship drought that represents an anomaly for the decorated program, which has won the most national titles (10) of any NCAA volleyball program.

The fact isn’t lost upon Zastrow that in high school, she also had to wait until her senior season to hoist a trophy.

“My class in high school was very strong; we sort of all peaked at the same time. And I think that’s sort of happening the same way. There are a lot of parallels between the two,” she said.

And it might just take some extra kills from a fast-paced offense to complete the parallel and get the Bears some postseason hardware.

Walby described Wash. U.’s offensive pace as reminiscent of a Division I program’s, which can mess with opposing team’s blockers who are more familiar with a slower Division III tempo.

“Because our girls are fast and athletic, we want them exploding to the ball faster, and we want them to be able to swing a lot quicker,” she said.

“Our tempo is huge. We run probably the fastest offense in the country right now,” Nelligan said. “If we can change things while keeping them fast, that’s unstoppable.”

She wasn’t the only Bear with that word in her lexicon.

When asked to describe the team’s offense in one word, Zastrow paused. “Diverse, definitely,” she offered.

Then she paused again.

“And unstoppable,” she added with a hearty laugh. “I mean, when we get going…nobody can dig us.”