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Provo • A lot of players on the No. 1-ranked BYU men's volleyball team — the odds-on favorite to capture the national championship when the NCAA Tournament begins next week — played the sport growing up at the club, high school or national levels.
Serving, digging, setting and spiking are part of their DNA.
Junior outside hitter Jake Langlois is not one of those guys.
Incredibly, the 6-foot-10 all-conference performer who is third on the team in kills with 267 and carries a .317 hitting percentage did not play organized volleyball as a youngster until he tried out for the BYU team in 2011.
"Yeah, I guess I am somewhat unique in that regard," Langlois understated. "I had never played in a volleyball game with refs and scorekeepers and all that until I got to BYU."
It is crazy, but true.
Langlois grew up in the southern suburbs of San Jose, Calif., and was a soccer and golf star at Santa Teresa High, while also playing a little bit of street hockey. But he grew from a 5-10 freshman into a 6-8 senior, and started to organize some pickup volleyball matches at his church because "it was fun" and because his father, Douglas, played club volleyball at BYU in the 1980s and was beginning to teach him a few techniques and skills.
Upon entering BYU in 2010-11, Langlois wanted to stay involved in athletics, so he devised a plan. He would first try out for the volleyball team. If that didn't work, he would give basketball a try, and then golf, because he was a 3-handicap in high school.
"It was all just for fun — no expectations whatsoever," he said.
BYU's volleyball roster was already set in 2010, but coaches allowed him to practice with the redshirts and other newcomers on what they call the "Dark Side," a portion of Smith Fieldhouse curtained off from where the regulars practice.
"I looked like a dork when I played," he acknowledged. "I was so bad. I had no real skills, no technique at all."
He recalled playing against BYU's stars in practice one time, guys such as Rob Stowell and Futi Tavana, and thinking he would never make the traveling team, let alone become a star.
But he was 6-foot-10, and when he returned from a church mission to Maceio, Brazil, he made the team as a walk-on in 2014, and played sparingly. Very sparingly. Not only was he playing in real, live college volleyball matches, he was playing in front of thousands of people.
"The first time, it was weird," he said. "I mean, I played golf and soccer in high school, and neither of those sports bring out a crowd, especially golf. I was by myself, basically. And so the first game was interesting. I loved it, though. And then I loved going to other places and hearing hecklers. It just helps me play better, I think."
Langlois saw action in just seven matches as a redshirt freshman, totaling 10 kills. But he became a gym rat, working under the tutelage of then-BYU coach Chris McGown, former longtime Hawaii coach Mike Wilton and former BYU coach Carl McGown, Chris McGown's father.
It also helped that he was roommates with one of the best volleyball players BYU has ever produced, Taylor Sander, now a member of Team USA. Langlois credits Sander with spending hours and hours of time watching film with him, and dishing out pointers.
With Sander having graduated and current star Ben Patch still away on a church mission, Langlois blossomed into a star in 2015, all while playing with stress fractures in both legs. He earned a partial scholarship — in Division I volleyball, schools have 4.5 scholarships to divvy up to the entire team — and earned MPSF second-team honors.
Current BYU coach Shawn Olmstead, who inherited this talented team from McGown after coaching BYU's women's team to the national championship match in 2014, said Langlois' athleticism and hard work have helped him make up for the lack of experience.
"He continues to just improve and improve," Olmstead said. "We have a bunch of really, really physical, strong boys. Every single day, they're excited to come to practice. And no matter what is going on in practice, they've been very attentive. They compete at practice. We kinda foster that, we encourage that."
Langlois was the AVCA National Player of the Week after leading BYU to a road sweep of then-No. 1 UCLA in early April, collecting 14 kills in the first match and 11 in the second. He also had six aces as he continues to develop as a weapon from the service line.
He continued to shine in the MPSF tournament last week, helping BYU down UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and UCLA to get the No. 1 overall seed in next week's NCAA Tournament.
He had 13 kills again UCI, 12 against UCSB and 8 against the Bruins.
Twitter: @drewjay —
About Jake Langlois
• Six-foot-10 junior from San Jose, Calif., did not play organized volleyball until he entered BYU as a freshman in 2010 and tried out for the team.
• Rejoined the BYU volleyball team in 2014 after a two-year LDS Church mission to Maceio, Brazil.
• Was an all-MPSF second-team performer as a sophomore and a first-team performer as a junior.
• Is currently third on the NCAA Tournament-bound team in kills with 267 and boasts a .317 hitting percentage. —
NCAA men's volleyball tournament
At Rec Hall, Penn State University, State College, Pa.
May 3 Play-in matches
• No. 4 Long Beach State (24-7) vs. No. 5 Erskine (20-6), 4 p.m. MDT
• No. 3 Ohio State (28-2) vs. No. 6 George Mason (18-11), 6 p.m. MDT
May 5 Semifinals
• No. 1 BYU (26-3) vs. LBSU-Erskine winner, 4 p.m. MDT
• No. 2 UCLA (25-6) vs. Ohio State-George Mason winner, 6 p.m. MDT
May 7 Championship
Semifinal winners, 5 p.m MDT, ESPN2