Florida State University Athletics
Elena Lam is Playing Volleyball Her Own Way -- Whether You Like it Or Not
9/12/2025 10:15:00 AM | Women's Beach Volleyball
TALLAHASSEE – Elena Lam and her father are familiar with, as they have dubbed them, the Three Truths of Sport.
First, the Florida State freshman says, "you're ridiculed, then you're hated, then you're loved. I've been ridiculed for my style of play, I've been hated before."
She is the first to admit that, throughout her time on the juniors circuit, she was never the most liked player, just as she's quick to shrug her shoulders about the matter. Being liked was never her goal; winning was. She'd see her opponents hanging out with one another under tents, grabbing snacks and drinks and chatting, and it didn't interest her.
Winning did.
"My goals are more important than anything else -- friends, parties, anything else," she says. "I want that goal so much that it doesn't really matter what else."
This hyper focus on winning, on her goals, explains quite a bit about the 5-foot-6, three-sport athlete from South Plantation High who carries not a chip, but a mid-sized boulder on her shoulder. Her idea of a fun night is not the stereotypical college experience: You will not find her out in College Town until the wee hours of the morning, but in bed by eight and up at five. The freshman 15 that can often impact even the most physically fit of athletes? Such will not be an issue for Lam, who measures every meal with a food scale and brought her own salmon and oodles to a dinner at head coach Brooke Niles' house. Netflix binges? Nah. She'll pick up Tim Grover's W1nning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, instead.
"Everything I've done has been to garner an athletic advantage: the number I wear, the foods I eat, the books I read, everything is for the goal," she says. "A lot of people who aren't athletes don't understand that."
And while it is an awful nuisance to be on the other side of the net from her, it is no small advantage to have her on your side of things. She has won five of her last six USA Volleyball tournaments, the first of which came alongside sophomore standout Bailey Higgins. In April of 2025, she won the annual Fudpuckers doubles tournament -- in women's open. She does this winning with little flash and sizzle, but smarts and control and that chip on her shoulder, much like her favorite player, Trevor Crabb.
"I feel like I can relate to him so much. He calls himself the villain," she says.
In an indirect way, she has been too. With her smaller stature, Lam has to get creative to score, finding the most efficient ways to get a ball to the sand. She'll send it over on one, on two, lob up options for bigger partners, embracing the unorthodox, often devious, manners to put a ball away. She'll hear parents on the sidelines groan about what can be seen as breaches of some unwritten etiquette about the manner in which she scores – parents who have conveniently forgotten that that etiquette has since been rewritten by Laura Ludwig, the 2016 Olympic gold medalists who became so known for going over on one that the move has been coined, simply, The Ludwig. Or that 2023 World Champion Sara Hughes is known for the same, or 2016 Olympian Brooke Sweat before her.
It's scrappy. It's different.
It's Elena.
She likes it that way.
"Who the heck cares what they think of me? What they think of me is none of my business," she says. "I don't know these people. I'm really nice if you get to know me. I'm really serious about winning. That's my only goal. I'm only focused on winning. I don't care how other people are doing. I only care how I'm doing and how my partner is doing."
This has not gone unnoticed by her new teammates in Tallahassee. At a team bonding event in an Escape Room, Lam's energy was infectious. People -- athletes especially -- gravitate towards winners, and her teammates gravitated towards her.
Does it surprise you that her team won?
It shouldn't.
This is a young woman who would take comparisons to Kristen Nuss, twice voted the world's best defender, in 2023 and 2024, as a small slight. Because she doesn't want to be Kristen Nuss. She wants to be better.
"I want to beat her at some point," she says. "That's why I started using my left hand. If I want to be an AVP professional, and Kristen Nuss is the image, and I can do all the shots she can do with both hands, how much more deadly would that make me? I want to bring a different mentality. I want to think differently than what the pros are doing, and I want to play differently than what the pros are doing.
"I don't want to be known as 'Oh she plays like this person' I want to be known as: She plays like her."
There will be no stone unturned for her to do exactly that. She's erased added sugar from her diet and abstains from anything that doesn't push her towards her goals because, she says, "my goals are more important than eating this piece of pizza."
She describes her day as "I wake up, I eat, I work out, I go to practice, I do class. I don't want cheat days. I'm not giving myself an option to have a cheat day. I'm not giving myself the option to do anything less than I'm capable of doing.
"I want to win a National Championship. The only reason I came here was to win a National Championship."
And then, perhaps, she will turn to the Third Truth, one Crabb learned as well. He was ridiculed and, in some circles, hated, as he lost one AVP final after the next – eight in a row at one point. It spawned a hashtag, #NeverTrevor, amongst AVP fans and his rivals. And then one day he won, and won again, and in the last six years, no player in America has won more AVP tournaments than Crabb.
Now? He's one of the most loved players in the United States.
"There will be a point," Lam says, where she gets to that final truth, the one, "where I'm loved."
Listen to Lam on the SandyNoles Podcast by clicking here.
For more information on the Florida State beach volleyball program, check Seminoles.com and follow us on social media at fsubeachvolleyball (IG) and @FSU_BeachVB (X).
First, the Florida State freshman says, "you're ridiculed, then you're hated, then you're loved. I've been ridiculed for my style of play, I've been hated before."
She is the first to admit that, throughout her time on the juniors circuit, she was never the most liked player, just as she's quick to shrug her shoulders about the matter. Being liked was never her goal; winning was. She'd see her opponents hanging out with one another under tents, grabbing snacks and drinks and chatting, and it didn't interest her.
Winning did.
"My goals are more important than anything else -- friends, parties, anything else," she says. "I want that goal so much that it doesn't really matter what else."
This hyper focus on winning, on her goals, explains quite a bit about the 5-foot-6, three-sport athlete from South Plantation High who carries not a chip, but a mid-sized boulder on her shoulder. Her idea of a fun night is not the stereotypical college experience: You will not find her out in College Town until the wee hours of the morning, but in bed by eight and up at five. The freshman 15 that can often impact even the most physically fit of athletes? Such will not be an issue for Lam, who measures every meal with a food scale and brought her own salmon and oodles to a dinner at head coach Brooke Niles' house. Netflix binges? Nah. She'll pick up Tim Grover's W1nning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, instead.
"Everything I've done has been to garner an athletic advantage: the number I wear, the foods I eat, the books I read, everything is for the goal," she says. "A lot of people who aren't athletes don't understand that."
And while it is an awful nuisance to be on the other side of the net from her, it is no small advantage to have her on your side of things. She has won five of her last six USA Volleyball tournaments, the first of which came alongside sophomore standout Bailey Higgins. In April of 2025, she won the annual Fudpuckers doubles tournament -- in women's open. She does this winning with little flash and sizzle, but smarts and control and that chip on her shoulder, much like her favorite player, Trevor Crabb.
"I feel like I can relate to him so much. He calls himself the villain," she says.
In an indirect way, she has been too. With her smaller stature, Lam has to get creative to score, finding the most efficient ways to get a ball to the sand. She'll send it over on one, on two, lob up options for bigger partners, embracing the unorthodox, often devious, manners to put a ball away. She'll hear parents on the sidelines groan about what can be seen as breaches of some unwritten etiquette about the manner in which she scores – parents who have conveniently forgotten that that etiquette has since been rewritten by Laura Ludwig, the 2016 Olympic gold medalists who became so known for going over on one that the move has been coined, simply, The Ludwig. Or that 2023 World Champion Sara Hughes is known for the same, or 2016 Olympian Brooke Sweat before her.
It's scrappy. It's different.
It's Elena.
She likes it that way.
"Who the heck cares what they think of me? What they think of me is none of my business," she says. "I don't know these people. I'm really nice if you get to know me. I'm really serious about winning. That's my only goal. I'm only focused on winning. I don't care how other people are doing. I only care how I'm doing and how my partner is doing."
This has not gone unnoticed by her new teammates in Tallahassee. At a team bonding event in an Escape Room, Lam's energy was infectious. People -- athletes especially -- gravitate towards winners, and her teammates gravitated towards her.
Does it surprise you that her team won?
It shouldn't.
This is a young woman who would take comparisons to Kristen Nuss, twice voted the world's best defender, in 2023 and 2024, as a small slight. Because she doesn't want to be Kristen Nuss. She wants to be better.
"I want to beat her at some point," she says. "That's why I started using my left hand. If I want to be an AVP professional, and Kristen Nuss is the image, and I can do all the shots she can do with both hands, how much more deadly would that make me? I want to bring a different mentality. I want to think differently than what the pros are doing, and I want to play differently than what the pros are doing.
"I don't want to be known as 'Oh she plays like this person' I want to be known as: She plays like her."
There will be no stone unturned for her to do exactly that. She's erased added sugar from her diet and abstains from anything that doesn't push her towards her goals because, she says, "my goals are more important than eating this piece of pizza."
She describes her day as "I wake up, I eat, I work out, I go to practice, I do class. I don't want cheat days. I'm not giving myself an option to have a cheat day. I'm not giving myself the option to do anything less than I'm capable of doing.
"I want to win a National Championship. The only reason I came here was to win a National Championship."
And then, perhaps, she will turn to the Third Truth, one Crabb learned as well. He was ridiculed and, in some circles, hated, as he lost one AVP final after the next – eight in a row at one point. It spawned a hashtag, #NeverTrevor, amongst AVP fans and his rivals. And then one day he won, and won again, and in the last six years, no player in America has won more AVP tournaments than Crabb.
Now? He's one of the most loved players in the United States.
"There will be a point," Lam says, where she gets to that final truth, the one, "where I'm loved."
Listen to Lam on the SandyNoles Podcast by clicking here.
For more information on the Florida State beach volleyball program, check Seminoles.com and follow us on social media at fsubeachvolleyball (IG) and @FSU_BeachVB (X).
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/ Women's Beach Volleyball
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