ASU Volleyball jelling around Geli Cyr in second straight 20-win season

Story by Jeff Metcalfe

Geli Cyr laughed when asked about her career-high 23 kills in an Oct. 9 volleyball rivalry win over Arizona.

“I honestly thought I was kind of doing bad,” said the Arizona State senior hitter, an insightful peer into Cyr provided you know her back story, going back to an 8-year-old taking up volleyball in part because she didn’t like the physical contact and running in soccer.

“I was doing both (until 12) then volleyball prevailed,” Cyr says. “I just loved how you can win a game in a bunch of different ways.”

She was living then in Kent, Wash., with her mother Annette praying for volleyball to win out since watching countless youth soccer games in the rain is testing for the most supportive of parents.

Geli, short for Angelique since she was in day care, started high school in 2017 at Kentlake already knowing a move to Texas was coming because of her father Ken’s job with Boeing. She was not thrilled at the idea.

“She struggled a lot,” Annette says. “It was such a huge change,” to a much larger school. “That was kind of overwhelming. We just kept pointing out this is going to be better, trust us. Higher level volleyball, higher level school. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

Volleyball would be the answer, no matter how insecure Cyr was about her mid-year transfer to Flower Mound High School.

From Flower Mound to ASU 

Twenty miles northwest of Dallas, Flower Mound is best known for a 50-foot hill with wild flowers known as The Mound in the center of what now is a city of 75,000.

“Our sports are fully full,” Cyr says. “We have some very competitive sports.”

As a sophomore in her first full school year (2018-19) at Flower Mound, Cyr helped the Jaguars climb to the top of the Texas 6A mound, winning a state title with a 40-7 record. Her high school teammates included Kaylee Cox, now a senior at Western Kentucky.

“Playing with Geli was so fun because she’s super competitive,” Cox says. “It was fun on and off the court with that team. I was really excited to get another really good volleyball player into our school. She grew into our program really easily and adapted to the high level of Texas volleyball.”

Cox was MVP of the 2018 state final against an opponent, favored Fort Bend River Point, featuring Skylar Fields, who starred in college at Texas and USC, and Claire Jeter, who played a season at Texas A&M before becoming Cyr’s ASU teammate starting in fall 2021.

Between Flower Mound and playing club for Texas Advantage, Cyr leaped onto college radar even though the recruiting process wasn’t all that appealing to her.

Until Arizona State came calling, sparking interest stemming from Cyr’s Pac-12 roots and love for Washington, where then ASU coach Sanja Tomasevic was Pac-10 Player of the Year in 2005.

“They bonded over that,” says Cry’s mom although Tomasevic at first was skeptical that 5-10 Geli had the size to be an outside hitter at a major college. That changed quickly. “She called us and said I’m sorry, I totally underestimated her. After watching her play, I’m completely confident in her. That was a huge compliment coming from her, and that resonated with Geli.”

Sticking with ASU through coaching change

Cyr committed early to ASU, in April 2019, and was an important part of Tomasevic’s best recruiting class, which earned Prep Volleyball.com honorable mention. 

But after losing seasons in 2021 and 2022, most of the players who entered with Cyr transferred and ASU made a coaching change. Cyr was briefly in the transfer portal, too, but harking back to her ambiguity about recruiting reconsidered even before ASU hired JJ Van Niel as its new coach.

“She would have these calls with teams then they would call and say our coach is leaving,” Annette Cyr remembers of the portal experience. “That happened more than one time. There was so much shuffling. She’d be having conversations with a school then they would ghost her. She was trying to better her situation, and it wasn’t working out. Thankfully, ASU welcomed her back.”

What’s happened since is fit for a storybook.

ASU is 48-9 under Van Niel in two seasons through Oct. 24. The Sun Devils reached the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 2023 and are contending to host in the upcoming postseason for the first time since 1995. Cyr was a major player in 2023 as the primary left-side hitter and even more so now given the loss of All-America right-side hitter Marta Levinska. 

Geli is playing phenomenal right now,” Van Niel said after her 23-kill, 17-dig performance Oct. 9. “She carries a really, really heavy load. She’s an undersized kid, she’s not one of the big bombers that regularly have six kills a set. But she does it by being really, really crafty. She’s done a phenomenal job since I’ve gotten here. She’s really worked hard at her craft and finds ways to score.”

Going back to high school, Cox always believed Cyr would excel in college.

“I’m not shocked at all,” Cox says. “She’s always been a really admirable player. She has a high volleyball IQ and knows how to play the game. Her vertical is absolutely insane so 5-10 doesn’t really matter. She just knows the game well and knows how to play it. That’s what makes her such a great player.”

From injury beginning to No. 1 left side

From a slow start coming off shoulder surgery to now, Cyr’s rise at ASU is a tribute to overcoming her own doubts.

She sat out nine of the Sun Devils’ first 11 matches in 2021 and had a combined eight kills in her first six collegiate matches. 

“I thought honest to god we ruined her with this surgery,” her mom says. “It really worried me. Her muscle was so loose her shoulder was falling out of joint. They had to pull her shoulder and tighten it then she said I can’t snap my arm like I used to. She went through a lot of painful rehab to get it loosened up, but the scar tissue would freeze the movement of her arm then they would have to microneedle her again,” resulting in more recovery time. 

Things improved by October, and Cyr would finish her freshman season with 15 starts and an established role going forward. She has started all but two of ASU’s matches since 2022 and 102 of 109 played in her career. She is on pace to become the 12th Sun Devil with 1,000-plus kills and digs for a program with more than a half century of history.

Remaining at ASU under Van Niel is the “best thing that ever happened to me,” Cyr says. “JJ has instilled a confidence in me that I haven’t felt since I was younger.” When her hitting is off, like against Utah and BYU in early October, Van Niel tells Cyr, “I don’t care. As long as you are pulling your weight in the back row, serving balls and staying out there as a captain then you’re doing your job.

“My freshman and sophomore years, I was trying to be perfect all the time. That’s just not realistic in sports.” 

Realistically, Cyr is plenty good enough. She has 16 double-doubles (kills-digs) including six straight through Oct. 24. Against four Big 12 opponents from Texas, Cyr has a combined 64 kills and 42 digs while hitting .324. 

“I grew up going to camps at those schools (TCU and Baylor),” Cyr says. “That was really crazy to be there playing. I had my family there, and I always love to try and make them proud. It was definitely a full circle moment,” with performances that earned her Big 12 offensive Player of the Week recognition. 

Cyr turned 21 on Aug. 29. She is two years to the day older than her brother Nicholas, a hockey player, who is at Texas A&M. “We’re a big hockey family,” Annette says, another connection with Van Niel, who played club hockey at USC. “He’s very hard on her, but you can tell he genuinely cares about her. That goes a long way with her. She loves to make him happy and carry the load she’s carrying. Geli is the happiest I’ve ever seen her.”

Happy enough to even pat herself on the back and dream a bit more about playing professionally before her longer-term goal of becoming a college coach. 

“I don’t really say it enough,” she says, “but I’m proud of myself because I feel like I’ve stepped up in that leadership role and on the court.”