At only five feet tall, senior and Vixens captain Laura Genes doesn’t seem to be an intimidating figure in a sport that often relies on height.
“When I go to these big tournaments, I’m always the shortest one on the team,” Genes said. “It’s true that anyone can play volleyball but to play the game at the level I play at my height is not easy.”
But sport runs in Genes’ family. “[My] mother was on the Brazilian national synchronized swim team and my father was a diver,” said Genes, who continues the family’s connection to swimming by training with a Brazilian synchronized swimming team during her summers in Brazil. Genes has swum competitively since age five. “I swam before I walked,” she said.
She also joined her middle school swim team, and continues to swim at least twice a week. “It’s still a big part of my life,” said Genes, who is part of the Pink Platypuses, a synchronized swimming group led by Genes’s mother. The group occasionally performs at Roosevelt Island.
Genes’s love for volleyball began when she moved to Texas the months after September 11, 2001 as a sixth grader because her stepfather was working there. Genes joined the varsity volleyball team her first year.
“I wasn’t like all the other kids. I wasn’t blonde. I didn’t have blue eyes and I needed something to make me happy while I was there,” Genes said.
Her varsity experience led to Genes making the cut for varsity volleyball at Stuyvesant her freshman year. As setter, she tallied 197 assists, 10 aces and 31 service points her sophomore year, the same year the team made the city playoff semifinals. Last year, she led her team with 126 assists and 14 digs, or fore-arm passes of a hard-driven volleyball. Her transition to captain of the team her junior year was no surprise.
“She has a huge impact when we’re on the court,” junior Tina Khiani said. “Without her, the whole team would fall. She’s basically the leader on the court.”
Genes has come a long way. “When she was a sophomore, I was trying to find someone else to [be the setter]. I didn’t have faith in [Genes],” Vixens’ coach Philip Fisher said. “She won me and the rest of the girls over. Her work ethic is beyond reproach,” he said.
“[Genes] takes time out of her own schedule to improve the volleyball team,” said fellow Vixen and senior Lauren Gonzalez, citing how Genes once explained each position and its role to her teammates. “She really goes the extra mile.”
Though the transition wasn’t easy, the role of captain is not new for Genes. She was also the captain for the New York City Juniors, a club team that reached the Junior Olympics in Puerto Rico from 2003 to 2005. “Last year, she was learning to take on the responsibilities,” Khiani said.
Now in her second year as captain, Genes continues to improve the team’s game. “She took all the good things she did last year and made them better this year,” senior Vanessa Charubhumi said.
According to Gonzalez, Genes also helps her teammates improve by pointing out aspects of their games they cannot see for themselves. “If my timing is off, [Genes] will tell me to work on my timing,” Gonzalez said. “She’ll always say ‘Stay on your toes!’ and to always talk to each other.”
Genes has impressed not only her teammates and her coach but also the referees. “Every referee we deal with basically tells me about her toughness and how she keeps the team together. She’s magnetic and everyone just rallies around her,” Fisher said.
Even with Genes’s individual success, nothing would mean more to Genes than for the Vixens to win the city championships—it would the first in Vixen history. During Genes’s high school career, the Vixens have come close but the John F. Kennedy Lady Knights have knocked them out of the playoffs every year.
“I would cry. If we were able to win gold, it would be my biggest accomplishment ever,” Genes said.
But she and the rest of the team are not measuring their success on whether they win the championships. “No matter what, these four years have been amazing because it makes me happy every year. I look forward every day to come down to practice,” Genes said.
