Florida State University Athletics
Bailey Higgins Wants to Know
9/27/2025 3:50:00 PM | Women's Beach Volleyball
TALLAHASSEE – Bailey Higgins wants to know why.
Why is a certain drill designed the way it's designed?
Why are the scoring rules the way they are?
Why does her hand need to be here when blocking line, or there when blocking angle?
Or what. What is a common refrain as well.
What, as a recent example, qualifies as an ace?
Is it when the setter cannot touch the ball? But what if they can touch it but it's not so much a touch as it is a desperation dive to get a fingernail on it? Is that still a bonus point or...
She let's the question hang in the air. It's a good a question. Most of hers are.
She'd drive her mother, Karon, crazy with these questions. Karon thought they were personal, a kid nagging and ribbing her own parents for no other reason than just because. So Bailey would pepper her throughout her youth career, a steady stream of whys and whats and whos and wheres and anything else the kid could think of.
"She hated me because she thought I was being a smart Alec," Bailey said, laughing. "She always thought I was just being a smart Alec because she's my mom."
And then Bailey switched teams – and the questions persisted. The new coach was flabbergasted.
"She always has so many questions!" the new coach told Karon.
Finally, Karon could exhale. She didn't have a nagging kid. She just had an intensely curious one.
"I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing," Bailey says.
Higgins is both an exception in her insatiable curiosity and not. She is the joyful, inquisitive face of a generation that is known for exactly that: They want to know why.
"Gen Z has always been brought up in very curious mind," said Gary Green, a professor at Georgia who has worked with worked with almost 150 sports teams across 17 different sports and 37 different universities and who also spoke at Florida State last spring. "They want to know why. They're always going to ask you, 'Why should I do that? How does it relate to me?' It's always about them, but in a very particular way in terms of -- general, some generic emails, texts, conversations, don't really work with them, because they have so much information.
"So it's about the quality over the quantity. So this generation, it's really important to actually address them as individuals, which means you have to know them as people as well as athletes. As I say with Gen Z, if you don't know them as people, you can't coach them as athletes. And it's very important. This is a generation that will care about you when you show you care about them. This is a generation that will invest in you and your program when you invest in them.
"It's a generation that will give you some respect when you show them some respect. So it's kind of a mutual agreement. It's not this idea that 'I'm the coach, I say this, you do this because I'm the coach, I've got this experience.' If you want to get the best out of this generation, then you've got to invest, you've got to be honest, you've got to trust, and you've got to know them as well as they trust, invest and care about you."
Higgins has invested in Florida State and Florida State has invested back, going all in on the sophomore before she was necessarily prepared for it herself. Just three months into her move to Tallahassee, Higgins was competing in the AVCA Pairs Championships in Huntsville, Alabama, a tournament featuring the top pairs from every school around the country.
Now, suddenly, all of those questions Higgins typically asks of those around her, she was asking herself.
"I'm going to Huntsville?" she wondered. "Why?"
"I was," she elaborated, "truly experiencing imposter syndrome."
That would only intensify. The better Higgins played, the more she became a central figure to the team's success. It took just two weeks for her to be named Conference Pair of the Week alongside Carra Sassack . She won eight of her first 10 matches, including a pair of ranked victories over Georgia State and Texas. Soon, she'd notice a -- potentially spurious -- correlation between her individual results and the team's as a whole: When she won, Florida State seemed to win; when she lost, the 'Noles seemed to lose. Upon further inspection, this is both true and not, but the admission serves to highlight the unfair pressure Higgins and her imposter syndrome placed on her shoulders.
"I did talk to coach [Brooke Niles] about 'I belong here, I belong here now, this is what it is,' but I was putting on a front, I was really thinking 'I'm not supposed to be here, what am I doing?'" Higgins said.
Eventually, however, she grew accustomed to it. Felt natural. Stopped, for the first time in her life, asking questions (although they continued at their usual breakneck pace in practice), stopped wondering if she was good enough for the role she was playing and acknowledged she'd earned it, that Niles trusted her on court three for a reason.
"Resetting after CCSAs and going to NCAAs, even though I lost those two matches, I still felt like I was supposed to be there," Higgins said. "It felt very comfortable. It was up and down but by the end of playing and competing, I put myself at the same level as everyone I'm competing with back home. I'm just like them. We're all together. It faded by the very end of the season."
It has made for a smooth start to a sophomore fall in which Higgins fully understands her role and why she is here, at Florida State, a top-five program where she is expected to be a leader and plays the part. She's settled in on campus, routinely getting much of the team together to root on tennis and soccer and baseball and softball and the football team even when it was mired in its difficult 2024 season. The imposter syndrome is gone, the growth phase of her freshman year having gone through its necessary pains.
Now, the full firepower of her questions are no longer directed at herself in an existential examination, but at her coaching staff.
"I feel like personally I still tried to have a leadership role and speak my mind," she said. "That part of me hasn't changed. Them seeing me compete a full year, my teammates might view me in a different aspect. But I don't feel much different.
"One of our big words for the year is authentic. We're just so authentic. We're different, and when I explain it to people, you just have to experience it. Even our relationships with [assistant coaches Travis Mewhirter] and Nick [Lucena] and Brooke, it's different. It's so authentic and real."
Listen to Higgins 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).
Why is a certain drill designed the way it's designed?
Why are the scoring rules the way they are?
Why does her hand need to be here when blocking line, or there when blocking angle?
Or what. What is a common refrain as well.
What, as a recent example, qualifies as an ace?
Is it when the setter cannot touch the ball? But what if they can touch it but it's not so much a touch as it is a desperation dive to get a fingernail on it? Is that still a bonus point or...
She let's the question hang in the air. It's a good a question. Most of hers are.
She'd drive her mother, Karon, crazy with these questions. Karon thought they were personal, a kid nagging and ribbing her own parents for no other reason than just because. So Bailey would pepper her throughout her youth career, a steady stream of whys and whats and whos and wheres and anything else the kid could think of.
"She hated me because she thought I was being a smart Alec," Bailey said, laughing. "She always thought I was just being a smart Alec because she's my mom."
And then Bailey switched teams – and the questions persisted. The new coach was flabbergasted.
"She always has so many questions!" the new coach told Karon.
Finally, Karon could exhale. She didn't have a nagging kid. She just had an intensely curious one.
"I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing," Bailey says.
Higgins is both an exception in her insatiable curiosity and not. She is the joyful, inquisitive face of a generation that is known for exactly that: They want to know why.
"Gen Z has always been brought up in very curious mind," said Gary Green, a professor at Georgia who has worked with worked with almost 150 sports teams across 17 different sports and 37 different universities and who also spoke at Florida State last spring. "They want to know why. They're always going to ask you, 'Why should I do that? How does it relate to me?' It's always about them, but in a very particular way in terms of -- general, some generic emails, texts, conversations, don't really work with them, because they have so much information.
"So it's about the quality over the quantity. So this generation, it's really important to actually address them as individuals, which means you have to know them as people as well as athletes. As I say with Gen Z, if you don't know them as people, you can't coach them as athletes. And it's very important. This is a generation that will care about you when you show you care about them. This is a generation that will invest in you and your program when you invest in them.
"It's a generation that will give you some respect when you show them some respect. So it's kind of a mutual agreement. It's not this idea that 'I'm the coach, I say this, you do this because I'm the coach, I've got this experience.' If you want to get the best out of this generation, then you've got to invest, you've got to be honest, you've got to trust, and you've got to know them as well as they trust, invest and care about you."
Higgins has invested in Florida State and Florida State has invested back, going all in on the sophomore before she was necessarily prepared for it herself. Just three months into her move to Tallahassee, Higgins was competing in the AVCA Pairs Championships in Huntsville, Alabama, a tournament featuring the top pairs from every school around the country.
Now, suddenly, all of those questions Higgins typically asks of those around her, she was asking herself.
"I'm going to Huntsville?" she wondered. "Why?"
"I was," she elaborated, "truly experiencing imposter syndrome."
That would only intensify. The better Higgins played, the more she became a central figure to the team's success. It took just two weeks for her to be named Conference Pair of the Week alongside Carra Sassack . She won eight of her first 10 matches, including a pair of ranked victories over Georgia State and Texas. Soon, she'd notice a -- potentially spurious -- correlation between her individual results and the team's as a whole: When she won, Florida State seemed to win; when she lost, the 'Noles seemed to lose. Upon further inspection, this is both true and not, but the admission serves to highlight the unfair pressure Higgins and her imposter syndrome placed on her shoulders.
"I did talk to coach [Brooke Niles] about 'I belong here, I belong here now, this is what it is,' but I was putting on a front, I was really thinking 'I'm not supposed to be here, what am I doing?'" Higgins said.
Eventually, however, she grew accustomed to it. Felt natural. Stopped, for the first time in her life, asking questions (although they continued at their usual breakneck pace in practice), stopped wondering if she was good enough for the role she was playing and acknowledged she'd earned it, that Niles trusted her on court three for a reason.
"Resetting after CCSAs and going to NCAAs, even though I lost those two matches, I still felt like I was supposed to be there," Higgins said. "It felt very comfortable. It was up and down but by the end of playing and competing, I put myself at the same level as everyone I'm competing with back home. I'm just like them. We're all together. It faded by the very end of the season."
It has made for a smooth start to a sophomore fall in which Higgins fully understands her role and why she is here, at Florida State, a top-five program where she is expected to be a leader and plays the part. She's settled in on campus, routinely getting much of the team together to root on tennis and soccer and baseball and softball and the football team even when it was mired in its difficult 2024 season. The imposter syndrome is gone, the growth phase of her freshman year having gone through its necessary pains.
Now, the full firepower of her questions are no longer directed at herself in an existential examination, but at her coaching staff.
"I feel like personally I still tried to have a leadership role and speak my mind," she said. "That part of me hasn't changed. Them seeing me compete a full year, my teammates might view me in a different aspect. But I don't feel much different.
"One of our big words for the year is authentic. We're just so authentic. We're different, and when I explain it to people, you just have to experience it. Even our relationships with [assistant coaches Travis Mewhirter] and Nick [Lucena] and Brooke, it's different. It's so authentic and real."
Listen to Higgins 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).
Players Mentioned
/ Women's Beach Volleyball
/ Women's Beach Volleyball
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