Following a standout All-American career at UWF, Taylor Vaneekeren is in her second season as assistant coach under head coach Melissa Wolter. Upon exhausting her eligibility, she held the position of graduate assistant before being elevated to the full-time assistant role in June 2023.
In her first season as assistant, she helped mold freshman Gabi Moulton into the program’s next great setter. Moulton tallied 836 assists in 2023, tying the 14th-best season mark set by Vaneekeren in 2019, and won GSC Freshman of the Year honors. Vaneekeren then helped Moulton take the next step as a sophomore, racking up 1,205 assists for the seventh-best program season mark and taking home GSC Player and Setter of the Year honors, reaching Vaneekeren’s rarefied air in 2022. When the 2024 season concluded, Vaneekeren graduated with her Masters in Business Administration from UWF in December.
A product of Naperville, Illinois, Vaneekeren was a 4-year letter winner as a setter for the Argos from 2018-23 where she compiled 4,096 assists (2nd all-time at UWF) and 8.21 assists per set, 130 service aces (4th), 1,158 digs (7th) and a school-record 497 sets played. She occupies the 3rd (2021), 6th (2022) and 13th (2019) spots on the UWF record list for assists in a season. She also totaled 229 kills on a .304 hitting percentage and 142 total blocks. Her match high in assists came in the 2022 season opener against Wheeling, in which she racked up 60, the seventh-most in a match in program history.
Vaneekeren was a 3-time All-American (2 AVCA, 1 D2CCA) and received All-Region recognition twice by both organizations. She was the first player in program history to place on the AVCA First or Second Team twice in her career. She earned a pair of Gulf South Conference Setter of the Year Awards, in addition to two First Team All-Conference selections. UWF also won GSC regular-season and tournament titles in all four years of her competition, compiling a 62-2 record in conference matches with a 114-25 overall record. (There was no 2020 volleyball season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.) She even saw playing time in four games for the women's basketball team in February of 2020 when the team was short on depth.
In 2022, Vaneekeren produced one of the top setter seasons in UWF history and earned her second AVCA All-America award after garnering First Team honors in 2021. She put up 1,281 assists for an average of 10.41 per set, 302 digs, 54 total blocks, 133 kills with a .357 hitting percentage, 40 aces and 202 total points across all 123 sets of all 34 matches. She led the GSC and was 34th in the nation in assists per set, while also finishing the season with 16 double-doubles and a team high in service aces. When it was all said and done, she finished her final campaign with NCAA South Region All-Tournament Team honors and was named Division 2 Conference Commissioner's Association (D2CCA) South Region Player of the Year, Gulf South Conference Offensive Player of the Year and Setter of the Year before earning GSC Championship Most Outstanding Player while leading the Argos to their fifth consecutive GSC Tournament Championship and 11th overall.
She finished the year as a GSC All-Academic and College Sports Communicators/CoSIDA Second Team Academic All-America® winner, her second time winning the award after also receiving Second Team honors in 2021, another first in program history achieved by Vaneekeren. After earning her Bachelor's in Sports Management with minors in Sports Psychology and Management with a 3.96 GPA, she was awarded the 2023 GSC Commissioner's Trophy at the GSC Annual Awards Banquet in June, the most prestigious honor bestowed by the conference annually to the student-athlete who best combines outstanding performance on the field or court and high academic achievement in the classroom with significant community service and extracurricular activities. The awards didn't stop after graduation, as she was then named the D2CCA Women's South Region Scholar-Athlete of the Year in September 2023.
UWF went 35-2 in 2021 and hosted the NCAA South Region Tournament as the No. 1 seed with Vaneekeren earning First Team All-America plaudits from the AVCA and D2CCA. She totaled 1,322 assists on the season, the third-most in a season in program history and eighth player in program history to record 1000 in a season, and finished with 121 kills, 40 service aces, 357 digs, and 68 total blocks in addition to her assists. She led the team in aces once again and tallied 18 double-doubles. She also finished tops in the conference and 7th in the nation in total assists and 20th in the nation in assists per set, all while leading an offense that ranked 2nd in the nation in hitting percentage and 3rd in the nation in kills per set. In the postseason, she was named to the GSC and NCAA South Region All-Tournament teams while also winning GSC Championship Most Outstanding Player. She was also a CSC Academic All-District honoree. Throughout her career, she was twice named to the CSC Academic All-District and GSC All-Academic teams and four times to the GSC Academic Honor Roll.
While in high school, she earned two varsity letters each in volleyball and in basketball at Benet Academy. She finished her senior season with a .391 setting efficiency, a .300 hitting efficiency and a 92.2% serving efficiency with 22 aces while being selected as the 2017 DuPage County Top Area Athlete and leading Benet volleyball to a 32-7 record. The team finished as the Sectional Runners-up, Regional Champions, and Benet Invite Champions and were ranked first in DuPage County and fourth in Illinois at season's end by Illinois MaxPreps. In 2016, she earned All-Tournament Team at the Sports Performance President 's Day Tournament after earning All-Tournament Team honors at the Hinsdale Central Invitational as a sophomore. As a freshman in 2014, she earned WCPL All-Region Team Honors. As a senior, she helped lead Benet basketball to a Top-8 finish in the state as the team finished as Sectional Champions and Super-Sections Runners-Up. At the club level, she played volleyball for Michio Chicago Volleyball Academy.
During her college career, Vaneekeren served as UWF's Student-Athlete Advisory Council (SAAC) President. Additionally, she helped organize UWF volleyball's inaugural Silent Set in October of her senior year to bring attention to hearing loss in conjunction with National Protect Your Hearing Month. Affected by hearing impairment herself, she was inspired to start the event after learning of a similar tradition begun by Penn State volleyball. In honor of the one in eight Americans who experience hearing loss and the digit combination in Vaneekeren's jersey number of 17, the team encourages fans to join them as they silently cheer until UWF scores its eighth point of the first set. The event is now an annual tradition for the program.
