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Letter-perfect
Ultra-competitive Tashima ideal for libero position — and poignant with the pen BY BILL MCLEAN, sports@northshoreweekend.com
T
he Tashima sisters,Taylor and Isabelle, are sitting at the kitchen table at home in Wilmette. An elbow hits the table, anchoring an elevated hand. It is time. Time to engage in another bout of arm wrestling in their favorite venue. An elbow of the other sister hits the table.Two eyes glare at two eyes. Translation: “You’re on!”The sisters clasp hands. The sisters battle, their faces scrunching and reddening. A sister wins.The other elbows hit the table shortly thereafter, ready for Round Two.Taylor (New Trier,’14), a lefty, is a sophomore setter on Northwestern University’s volleyball team. Isabelle, a righty, is a senior libero on New Trier’s volleyball team. “My sister is so competitive,” Taylor, also competitive, says. “You should have seen us when we were little, playing Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders or any game. Those games got intense. Isabelle does not like to lose. She’s competitive and focused when she plays volleyball … when she plays anything.” Isabelle Tashima gripped a pen one day this past February and started to write a letter. Her older sister wasn’t nearby this time, wasn’t getting ready for an entirely different kind of in-house test — one involving, perhaps, ink and cursive script. Taylor Tashima would soon undergo surgery to remove a benign tumor from her right sinus and orbital cavity. Isabelle, all alone on that day in February, wrote heartfelt thoughts after writing “Dear Taylor.” Compassion had supplanted competition. “A nice letter, really nice,”Taylor recalls. “I still have it. You keep letters like that. What she wrote reassured me.” The surgery was a success, but Taylor developed an infection a couple of months later and returned to a hospital. Her parents, Paul and Jennie, were out of town at the time. Taylor’s favorite arm-wrestling opponent showed up at the hospital to talk, to listen, to be there. “It was scary,” Isabelle says of her sister’s diagnosis. “Taylor … she was positive, stayed positive. She was
really strong. We talked on the phone, and I tried to be there for her as often as I could.” Isabelle Tashima, on a volleyball court, is everywhere. She had to be everywhere, seemingly at the same time, in the final of the New Trier Tournament on Sept. 5, against an undefeated Loyola Academy team. How else would the 5-foot-7 libero have been able to finish with 21 digs in a two-set victory? Tashima here. Tashima there. Tashima everywhere. “To be a great libero, you have to be able to read the game well, think ahead,” Taylor says. “Isabelle does those things. She gets to so many shots because she wants to win so badly. And she grew up all around volleyball, watching my matches [at the high school and club levels] and learning the game from our father [a skills coach for Wildcat Juniors volleyball club teams]. “Isabelle,” big sis adds, “has a high volleyball IQ.” Isabelle, verbally committed to Harvard University, and Taylor played together on New Trier’s varsity volleyball squad in 2013, Isabelle’s sophomore year and Taylor’s senior season. That unit placed third at the Class 4A state tournament, a year after Taylor helped the Trevians finish runner-up at state. Isabelle totaled 129 digs and 27 aces in ’13, with six of the digs and one of the aces coming in NT’s three-set defeat of Crystal Lake South in the match for third place at state. New Trier won six of its first eight matches this fall. Its co-captains are Tashima and senior outside hitter Erin Denham. “Her consistency, her calmness, her aggressiveness on defense, how skilled she is at handling the ball,” Trevians coach Hannah Hsieh says of Tashima’s top strengths as a libero. “She’s quiet, and she’s also a steady, confident force for us.” Denham, like Hsieh and the team’s setters, appreciates Tashima’s consistency. If the setter is a volleyball team’s “quarterback,” the libero is a volleyball’s “center.” The big difference: the “center” in volleyball has to “hike” the ball to her “quarterback” from all kinds of angles and, at times, while hustling
and 25, her team’s point totals in a 25-22, 25-19 decision. Those mattered. She cares about teaching kids the game of volleyball, a coach’s daughter developing youngsters’ volleyball IQs and repeating tips and reminders she had heard from her father and her sister. She cares about the teens and adults at Our Place in Wilmette, a place where she volunteers to support people with developmental disabilities. She cares about the patients at a local hospice care center, where she also volunteers her time and energy. Tashima digs volleyballs. Kids and teens and adults dig Tashima. “Isabelle,” Taylor Tashima says, “is a special person. Smart, too. She is incredibly smart. Harvard and Isabelle — that’s a perfect fit. Isabelle does a great job of finding balance in her life. Her dedication to school, to volleyball, to everything … I look up to her to because of her commitments. “I watched her play [against Lake Forest High on Sept. 8, a 25-12, 25-10 NT win], and afterward I went up to her to ask her to join my dad and me for dinner. She said, ‘No, sorry, I have to do homework.’ She has earned everything she has achieved.” The Taylor Tashima Story, following Taylor’s surgery in February, got good, really good. Sports Illustrated noted it in its “Faces in the Crowd” segment (Sept. 7 issue). Tashima, ranked 10th in the Big Ten with 8.38 assists per set as a freshman last fall, had attended the tryout sessions for the junior national team before her surgery in February. The 6-foot setter found out she had made the team in May and then helped the U.S. capture gold at the European Global Challenge in Pula, Croatia, in July. Isabelle Tashima must have highfived Taylor Tashima at least once after the championship. Can you see it and hear it? Can you see and hear their right hands slapping ‘Belle of the courT: Isabelle Tashima of the Trevians strikes a shot during recent action this fall. somewhere above their beaming She made a verbal commitment to Harvard University. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOEL LERNER faces? Can you see those smiles laterally. getic in matches, always ready to go. mitted she is to putting the team disappear slowly, kindred competi“Ball control, Isabelle is good at She executes great passes when we first.” tive spirits nudging kindred pure joy Those 21 digs she got to in that to some sideline? controlling the ball and getting the need them. Digs and passes … we ball to the setter, and she’s a really can count on her for those, always. win over LA earlier this month? You know what each must be good communicator,” the 6-foot “What I also like about her, what Those meant little to Tashima, thinking. Each is thinking, Kitchen Denham says. “She’s very ener- we all like about her, is how com- maybe nothing. She cared about 25 table, now!