It’s not lost on Delaynie Maple that Indiana volleyball coach Steve Aird is a lifelong, suffering Toronto Maple Leafs fan.
If you don’t follow hockey, think Chicago Cubs until they finally won the World Series in 2016.
“I made a joke, ‘Are you only recruiting me because my last name is Maple?’,” she said with a laugh.
Well, no, because short of winning a pro tournament, Delaynie Maple has, up to this point, done about all she can do in beach volleyball. And it might have been a while, but Maple was a pretty good high school indoor player.
She graduated Thursday from USC, where all she has on her beach volleyball resume is four NCAA titles in four years, winning almost every postseason honor imaginable. That followed a stellar Torrey Pines High School/club career.
The theoretical next step would be to go pro full time on the beach, where she already has more experience than most 21-year-olds.
But …
She’s going to play for Aird, that aforementioned Canadian, the seventh-year head coach at Indiana.
“I’m mainly doing it this year to first get a master’s (in sports management) but also push myself in ways that I wouldn’t here,” said Maple, who committed to play beach at USC as a freshman in…
