Growing up in Waltrop, Germany, Lea Adolph loved horseback riding. Her aunt owned horses, and at seven years old, Adolph was beginning to get into competitive riding.
However, she had also started to play volleyball. After about a year of doing both, Adolph had to make a difficult decision: choose between two things she loved most, volleyball and horseback riding.
The decision set her on a path to a destination she never expected.
Bred for volleyball 
Adolph remembers having to call her aunt to explain that she had decided to focus on volleyball.
“In tears, I had to tell my aunt, ‘I can’t ride horses anymore. I got to play volleyball,’ ” Adolph said. “It was a hard decision for an eight-year-old girl.”
As Adolph turned her focus to volleyball, she remained very involved with family. Her parents met when her father was her mother’s coach, and the sport helped the family bond together. When Adolph and her sister Katharina were young, they would go to their parents’ practices and play on the sidelines.
Those sideline games helped the two sisters grow close together, and they played on the same teams as they grew up.
“My sister and I have always spent a lot of time together,” Katharina Adolph said in an email. “We have always loved each other’s company and that we always had each other to spend time with but also to rely on. Our bond got stronger when we started playing for the same volleyball team and spend even more time together.”
Ultimately, Lea Adolph did what many elite young athletes in Europe do and began attending a boarding school devoted to athletics. As a teenager, she helped her team take fourth at the 2010 Junior European Championship, earn runner-up honors at the German Junior Championships in 2007, 2009 and 2011 and win the 2008 Bundespokal Cacup, a tournament that includes Germany’s state junior teams.
“Lea is a big team player,” Katharina Adolph said. “Working on herself means working for the team to her. Volleyball is very important to her. It is a huge part of her life and has been for a long time. Therefore she is a very passionate volleyball player who invests a lot in volleyball but who also gets a lot back while playing volleyball.”
Adolph’s play in these important events eventually drew interest from college coaches in the United States.
Welcome to the U.S.A.
As a teen, Lea accompanied Katharina to Kansas a year after Katharina was an exchange student. It was the first time Lea had been to the U.S., and she had a great time on her visit.
“It was a cool experience,” Adolph said. “The culture and the people, it’s a whole new life. I love America.”
When she returned home, she knew she wanted to attend school in America. Her coach got her in contact with an agency that helps international students in recruitment for collegiate athletics, and a woman from the agency assigned to assist Adolph helped her get multiple offers.
Adolph soon narrowed down her list to Louisiana Tech and Utah. The U had just announced that it would be entering the Pac-12 and Louisiana Tech’s coach was not going to return, which was a concern to Adolph. The icing on the cake for her to come to Utah came when Utes’ assistant coach Brian Doyon flew to Germany to watch her play.
“Lea brings a lot of intensity,” Doyon said. “She is a great passer, really good at ball control. One of the things I saw over there was that she passes well. Just really composed in the back row.”
Freshman problems
Starting life in a new country wasn’t easy. Catching onto English, not having a car, adjusting to a much more rigorous schedule, learning new rules of volleyball and changing her style of play became a challenge.
“There was just so many things going on,” Adolph said. “I started school and all those different things were … overwhelming. That’s a good word for it.”
Utah head coach Beth Launiere remembers having to tweak some of Adolph’s technique and get her in better condition to play. In Germany, the libero doesn’t get to serve the ball, and as a defensive specialist, Adolph wasn’t used to being out on the court continually. But Launiere knew she could help Adolph become the type of player that she wanted her to be.
“It’s just like any freshman,” Launiere said. “You run into different styles all the time. I think it’s a bigger adjustment for an international kid. We run every day, we are a lot faster.”
Adolph also gained a sudden realization about how far away she actually was from her family. Because of the eight-hour time difference, she didn’t get the opportunity to speak with her sister and parents as much as she wanted. She would try to Skype with them once a week, but much of the time it wouldn’t work out because of scheduling conflicts.
Even though Adolph was away from her own family, her team has helped her to feel at home. The other freshman she came to Utah with has become her very close and current roommate, Makenzie Moea’i, and her family have “adopted” Adolph into their family.
“My mom likes to call her ‘daughter from another mother,’” Moea’i said. “We have kind of taken her under our wing.”
Reflecting on the decision
It didn’t occur to Adolph as an eight-year-old that choosing to dive on the hardwood instead of leap fences on horses was going to take her away from her homeland, but she tells all of her friends back in Germany that it was the best decision she has ever made.
“It was an experience that I am glad that I had,” she said. “I tell all my friends back home that ‘If you get the opportunity, just do it. It’s amazing!’ ”