MADISEN SKINNER TRUDGES toward an empty table on an Austin sidewalk and plonks her yoga mat on a chair. It’s 5:30 p.m. on a toasty October day. She sighs.

Skinner is heading to yoga class on a rare day off for the Texas volleyball team. She’s wearing a touch of makeup, but it doesn’t hide the bags under her eyes. The two-time defending national champions dropped a five-setter to Texas A&M the night before, the first of what would become a stunning three-game losing streak at home.

“You looked good yesterday,” I say to Skinner. “How did you feel?”

“What happened yesterday?” she asks.

“Um, the match?”

“Oh right,” she says. She pivots. “I haven’t breathed since.”

The 23-year-old fifth-year senior got home after midnight, then attended two morning classes and had back-to-back calls with her agents to discuss her professional volleyball options. Then she took Finley, her three-legged dog, for a walk before hopping in her car to meet me for yoga.

She walks over to a hole-in-the-wall juice shop and orders a blueberry smoothie. As she returns to the table, the man at the counter peeks out the shop’s door.

“Do you go to UT?” he asks Skinner.

“Yes,” she says, sipping her smoothie.

“Do you play volleyball?” he asks.

She nods.

“It’s her!” he announces to the other employee inside the shop. A young Black woman runs out.

“You’re Madi Skinner,” she says.

She flashes a polite smile, then purses her lips and nods.

Being Madi Skinner means you’re a Texas volleyball star. It means you’re a three-time national champion. It means you can float like a drone and hammer a volleyball to the floor. It means you’re revered for doing things that don’t give you much joy. It means you’re questioning whether volleyball should be a part of a future that has so many other tantalizing options. It means you wish everyone would stop looking to you for answers to why this Texas dynasty is in danger.

For now, mercifully, it means you’re off to yoga.

MADI SKINNER CAN’T pinpoint what’s wrong. She’s sleeping well. She’s eating right. She’s watching film. She’s getting more reps in practice than she ever has before.

But her passing is failing her. “The ball comes off funky,” she says.

It’s mid-September, and Texas, the preseason No. 1, already has dropped three games — to Minnesota, Miami and Stanford. Skinner had eight service errors and five receiving errors in the three losses. She hit just .134.

Associate head coach David Hunt watched her in practice and noticed something weird: Skinner was jerking her arms right before they contacted the ball. He had never seen her do that before. He pointed it out to her.

The observation freaked Skinner out. If I don’t even know what my body is doing, how can I fix it?

During a 6-on-6 drill a couple of days later, coaches subbed Skinner out when she rotated into the back row. They asked her to go serve on the other side of the net. That’s when it dawned on her: Coach Jerritt Elliott was no longer letting her play six rotations.

Tears streamed down her eyes as she served. She stayed back after practice, serving ball after ball.

Why didn’t anybody tell me? Why didn’t Elliott talk to me?

The next day, Hunt called the reigning Big 12 Player of the Year in for a meeting. Elliott had wanted to talk to her, he said, but their schedules didn’t align. Elliott was worried about Skinner and wanted Hunt to check in on her.

Hunt asked how she was doing. He told her he believed in her. He told her Elliott believed in her. But the team needed wins.

“Why didn’t you guys talk to me before?” she asked him.

“You’re 100% right,” Hunt said. “We should have.”

Skinner nodded.

“I don’t feel like myself,” she told him. “I don’t know why.”

MADI SKINNER FELT most fulfilled by music. And dance. She grew up in a family where sports were the cornerstone, but she felt most at home in dance studios. She twirled before she could talk.

Her dad, Brian, played in the NBA, and before Madi had any memories, her mom lugged her and her older sister Avery across the country to watch him play. Madi was born in Katy, Texas, but the family moved to Toronto, and then to Cleveland, and then back to Katy to set up their base.

Madi thrived in ballet classes. Jazz and hip-hop, too. She loved moving her body to the rhythm. She also loved playing the piano. She listened to a song and played it by ear. No notes needed or wanted.

“I could sit and listen to music and I would literally be able to visualize a ballerina in my head doing different moves,” she says.

Her parents separated in 2003, when Madi was 2. Still, Avery and Madi traveled to watch their dad play. They sat courtside and shouted their heads off for him. After games, they waited for Brian and went out for late-night dinners.

Their mom, Rebecca, homeschooled Avery and Madi so they could travel to see him. The Skinner sisters knew their family didn’t look like a lot of families in Katy. When Madi was 7, she came home, crestfallen after spending time with family friends. Rebecca asked her what was wrong. Madi broke into tears.

“Why don’t we have what that family has?”

Rebecca held her child and soothed her. She told her she was loved by both parents. Madi stayed in her mom’s arms for a while that evening.

Soon, Madi was toted to volleyball practices because Avery, two years older, fell in love with the game when she was in fifth grade. Madi passed the time dancing and doing aerials on the sidelines. Sometimes Avery’s team would put Madi into a drill and ask her to toss for them. She ran away to continue her dancing as soon as she could.

Rebecca signed Madi up for gymnastics, and when she became too tall for that, she moved to soccer. A few years into soccer, Madi came home with some news: “Mom, I don’t want to play soccer anymore. The girls are mean.” She picked up guitar.

At 14, Madi grew too tall to be a ballerina. People kept steering her toward basketball, but Madi didn’t want anything to do with the game her dad played. He became more and more scarce over the years, and Madi didn’t want to play a sport that would invite comparisons.

Meanwhile, Avery racked up awards and trophies in volleyball, and Madi accompanied her sister on college visits and sat in on conversations with coaches.

One day after practice, Avery pulled Madi aside. “We’re going to hit some balls,” she said.

“Volleyball was something I was loving so much,” Avery says. “And Madi is literally good at everything she does. I wanted her to have something she enjoyed as much as I did.”

Madi had been around volleyball enough to know that 14 was too old to start.

“I’m not gonna be good,” she told Avery.

Avery began peppering with Madi, first after her practices and then outside their home. Madi had no idea what she was doing, but she liked the challenge. Avery’s club team, Houston Skyline, had tryouts coming up. Madi had seen all the opportunities volleyball opened up for Avery. She decided to give it a shot.

People tell me I am a gifted athlete. I want to love a sport as much as Avery loves volleyball. Maybe volleyball can be that sport for me, too.

MADI SKINNER LOOKED in disbelief at the letter telling her she made a team at Avery’s club. She knew the girl whose spot she had taken and thought, “She is so much better than I am. Why did they pick me?”

Jen Woods, now the associate head coach at Texas A&M, ran Houston Skyline with her husband back then. She knew exactly why.

Madi was rough, but her athletic abilities were unmatched. She was so lithe and she could jump so high. She mixed grace with power when she went up for a kill. Her ability to grasp new concepts was extraordinary.

“Anything Madi touches turns to gold,” Woods says.

Madi vividly remembers her first big tournament. All the girls around her talked about shot selection and finding space. The only thought going through her mind: Hit the ball over the net. Sometimes she swung and missed. Sometimes her hand made contact with the ball and it sprayed in an unexpected direction. She remembers Anders Nelson, now the head coach at Vanderbilt and then a Skyline assistant, watching her with a grimace.

“It was a Bambi moment,” Avery says. “This skinny, lanky girl playing, legs flailing, arms flailing. It didn’t always look pretty.”

Madi grew 5 inches during her first year playing club, and her shins ached from the sudden growth. She sat more than she played for the first several months.

It’s just not clicking right now, she thought. It’s going to click at some point.

Once Madi settled into her new body, she began excelling. Her athleticism shocked Woods. Avery was sheer power. Madi? Her explosiveness was mind-boggling.

“She is extremely quick in hitting from such a high point,” Woods says.

Avery spent hours perfecting every move. Madi executed the same move flawlessly in minutes.

“She could have started at 16 or 17, honestly, and had similar results,” Woods says.

But Madi constantly felt like she was playing catch-up. At 17, she was named the No. 2 recruit in the country. “There’s no way,” she thought. “They messed up.”

By then, Avery had moved to Lexington to play at Kentucky. Madi, feeling lonely, adopted Finley. The three of them joked that Madi got a dog to replace Avery. Rebecca and Madi sometimes drove from Katy to Lexington to watch Avery play. Madi saw up close what Avery’s life at Kentucky was like. A college dream began to take shape.

“I was like, if I can do this in five years in the club space when a lot of these girls have been doing it for so long,” Madi says. “If I can catch up then, like, I wanted to see what I was capable of at the next level.”

So when Kentucky offered her a scholarship, she delivered six fateful words to Rebecca.

“I’m going to go to Kentucky.”

IT’S ALL GLOMMED together in Madi Skinner’s mind. She arrived on the Kentucky campus. The Wildcats volleyball team played in the fall. Then it took a break. She wore masks and took COVID tests and isolated. She spent time with her teammate Reagan Rutherford and sometimes they went on picnics and painted on canvases.

I am praying that this is not how college is gonna be for the rest of my years, Madi thought.

Volleyball came back in the spring. And that’s when a specific memory takes shape: The Wildcats won the national championship, a first for Kentucky and a first for any team in the SEC. And the Skinner sisters were stars.

Madi pounded a career-high 19 kills in the title game against Texas. Avery had 14 kills and four blocks.

“We couldn’t have won that championship without her,” Avery says.

Because COVID pushed that 2020 tournament to the spring of 2021, there were just six weeks off between the end of one season and the start of the next. During that time, Avery Skinner transferred to Baylor to finish her college eligibility and to pursue a master’s degree in speech-language pathology. At Kentucky, fans, coaches and teammates started looking to Madi Skinner for leadership. She didn’t have it in her.

“I was playing so much volleyball I was sick of it,” Madi says. “I felt like people only really cared about me as a volleyball player.”

Talking to coach Craig Skinner (no relation) about her feelings didn’t seem like an option.

“When I was there, he was a coach, nothing more, nothing less,” Madi says. “No coffee dates. No chitchats.”

She didn’t have her piano or her guitar. She stopped dancing. All the little things that gave her joy were gone. At night, she curled into a ball in her bed and cried. She began having panic attacks. She had never felt this way before.

At a practice in early October, trainer Katy Poole could tell something was wrong. She pulled Madi aside and told her she was concerned. Madi started therapy. She continued to show up to volleyball every day, and she felt moments of joy. She clung to those. But one day in the locker room before practice, Poole found Madi in tears. She didn’t pry, but she sat with her as tears streamed down Madi’s face. Poole and the coaches decided she needed a mental health day and sent her home.

Rebecca remembers picking up Madi outside the arena after a match in late October. Madi got in, closed the door and burst into tears. “Mom, this is a lot,” she cried. Rebecca held her hands. “How can we help lessen your load? What can I do to help?” Rebecca asked. Madi had no answers.

A few weeks later, during warmups before a match, Coach Skinner called her aside. She remembers him telling her that she wasn’t engaging with her teammates, that she wasn’t invested in them, that she was pulling away.

She went to his office a few days later and sobbed.

“You know how down bad I am, how much I’m struggling, and you’re not texting me, not checking in on me, and you’re expecting so much from me as a volleyball player, and you’re expecting me to carry this huge load and to produce for the team and do all of these things,” she said, stumbling through her dialogue with him.

She remembers Skinner telling her that he cared about her, but that part of coming to college was growing up and learning how to deal with problems. His words didn’t resonate.

Madi continued to go to therapy.

By the time November rolled around, Madi lost the motivation to get out of bed. She was failing her classes. She remembers standing outside the student center one evening and thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.”

I want this all to end.

Tears streamed down her face as she texted a friend.

“I don’t want to live anymore.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

That whole night, every time she felt like she wanted it all to end, a more pressing thought followed:

I couldn’t do that to my mom. She would be devastated.

Then came the clearest thought she’d had in a long time.

I need to leave Lexington. I need to leave Kentucky. I need a fresh start.

THE DEFENDING CHAMPION Kentucky Wildcats lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament to unseeded Illinois. After hugging her teammates, Skinner had a specific destination in mind.

“I just need to put my hands on the piano,” she told her mom.

She ran to her family’s music room, closed her eyes and laid her fingers on the keys. She played every song she could think of.

“At that point, I had no more words left to say,” Madi says. “It sounds so stupid to say, but I felt like the piano got me. It heard me without me saying anything.”

She spent days thinking and talking to Avery, who listened and told her to do what made her happy. She imagined her life without volleyball. It was tempting. But she decided to give it another shot. In a different place. With less pressure. She called Skinner and told him she was entering the transfer portal.

She wanted to land in a city where she could fill her life with people and activities outside of volleyball. Like Los Angeles. UCLA and USC were her top choices. She wrote that down.

Nebraska coach John Cook called. Wisconsin called. Why would I leave Kentucky to go to Nebraska or Wisconsin?

“At that point, I did not care about the level of play,” she says.

Texas coach Jerritt Elliott sent her a text.

Madi shot him a quick reply. “I don’t imagine coming back to Texas. But thank you for reaching out. I have a lot of respect for you and your program.”

Elliott asked her to give him one phone call.

Madi ended up spending an hour on FaceTime with him. They spoke not a word about volleyball. Instead, Elliott asked her how she was doing, what was important to her and what she needed from him to feel heard and seen.

She remembers smiling for the first time in a long time. Elliott asked her to spend a day with him and the team. No pressure.

Madi had visits lined up with UCLA and USC that week, but she squeezed in a trip to Texas first. She liked that it was so close to her mom, so close to home. But a powerhouse team like Texas could also bring immense pressure.

Or, what if I go to Texas and things are better — good, even? What if there is a way to be an exceptional player and not feel miserable all the time?

She called Texas star Logan Eggleston before her visit and asked her to “give it to me straight.” Eggleston said she believed in the team, and in Elliott. That she believed Texas cared more about them as people than as volleyball players. That was exactly what Madi needed to hear.

During her visit, the Texas coaches spent the day learning about her as a person. The players — Eggleston, Asjia O’Neal and Molly Phillips — felt like old friends. Madi quickly realized that the roster was full of great players and leaders. She wouldn’t have the burden of carrying the team.

She felt hope for the first time in a year.

She flew to L.A. the next day and visited USC and UCLA. But her mind was far away. Back home, to be exact.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get back to that place of loving [volleyball] again,” she thought. “But I feel like I owe it to myself to at least give myself the opportunity to try to get there.”

She called Elliott and committed to Texas.

MADI SKINNER BROUGHT her guitar to the Texas dorms in January 2022. She played it every chance she got. She walked around downtown Austin, trying new cuisines — a Thai spot became her go-to. She paddleboarded with Eggleston, O’Neal and Phillips. She felt like she was experiencing college for the first time. She continued with therapy. During spring break, Eggleston invited her to spend time with her extended family in Malibu, and Madi packed up her beach clothes and went. They read by the beach, went skating and ate beachside dinners. That summer, she moved in with Eggleston and Phillips. They cooked together and spent evenings watching “The Bachelorette.”

When practice began, she stood on the sideline and saw her teammates give feedback and laugh with each other. She felt lighter. She began to smile.

“She was just as good as anybody else on that team,” Elliott says. “She brought some superpower with her blocking and attacking skills, and it gave us tremendous matchup opportunities between her and Logan — like you couldn’t just pick one.”

Texas beat Ohio State in the regional final that year, but a nervous Skinner hit just .128. Hunt remembered a friend telling him, “Hey, you need to pump Madi up. You need to let her know she’s Madi f—ing Skinner.” Before practice the next day, Hunt wrote MFS in caps on the whiteboard. When Madi arrived, she pointed to it and asked, “Is that me?”

Hunt said, “You’re Madi f—ing Skinner, all right.”

Skinner stared at the whiteboard. She nodded and smiled.

She wrote MFS on her finger tape for the national semifinal against San Diego. She unleashed a team-high 17 kills and hit .394. “She had a breakthrough,” Hunt says. In the title game sweep against Louisville, she had 12 kills and hit .407.

The expectations, like it or not, ramped up for her second season in Austin. Eggleston, the Longhorns’ leader and best player, graduated. More of the offense would run through Skinner. Teammates looked to her for vocal leadership.

Texas lost its season opener, when Skinner hit just .157. Texas lost its fourth game of the season, when Skinner hit .083. But the Longhorns lost just two more the rest of the way en route to a repeat national championship. Skinner had a career-high 26 kills against Tennessee in the regional semifinal. Texas beat two No. 1 seeds, Stanford and Wisconsin, leading up to the championship match. In the final against five-time champion Nebraska, Skinner had 16 kills in a stunning sweep. She won her third NCAA championship. She was named the most outstanding player of the final four. Volleyball Magazine named her national player of the year.

In the on-court interview, Courtney Lyle said, “Madi, you told us when you came to Texas that you were trying to find that love for volleyball again. Who is Madisen Skinner now?”

Skinner burst into tears. She tried to wipe them away. She gave up and held her face and sobbed.

“I am so thankful for the team,” she said. “I am obsessed with Longhorn Nation, and I can’t wait for next year.”

What she didn’t say was this:

“In that moment, I was reflecting on where I had been a year and a half ago compared to this completely, totally different person,” Skinner says. “Not only did I find my love for the sport again, I found the love for myself again and the desire to live and find joy in the little things.”

“It was so much more than just volleyball — seeing how much I transformed as a person.”

The next day, she hopped on a plane with her mom to watch Avery compete in Italy. She played Beethoven on a piano in the hotel lobby as kids gathered around her to watch and listen. Over the summer, she traveled to Paris for the Olympics. She visited the Palais Garnier opera house and enjoyed the French food. She waved at Coach Skinner across a packed gym. “Madi has made significant contributions to Kentucky, Texas, and college volleyball during the last five years,” he said in a statement to ESPN. “I wish her nothing but success the rest of her journey in this sport.”

Avery won an Olympic silver medal with Team USA. Madi wondered if the Skinner sisters could reunite for Los Angeles 2028.

Maybe that is my future.

SKINNER SLIDES INTO a booth for brunch exactly seven hours before Texas takes on Texas A&M at home in late October. She’s wearing an oversized white T-shirt and black shorts. Her curly hair is in a haphazard bun atop her head. She orders scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and a side of blueberry pancakes.

Players don’t usually do interviews on game days, she says, because they want to be locked in. She welcomes the change. Inadvertently, volleyball spills into the conversation. Sipping her water, she recounts her morning coffee chat with Elliott.

Star and coach aren’t seeing eye to eye. Skinner is upset with Elliott for not communicating more openly about removing her from six rotations. She wants him to help her fix whatever she’s doing wrong. Elliott wants Skinner to be more communicative. He wants her to come to him when she’s struggling, when she needs help. “I don’t need that,” Skinner told him. “I’ve never had that.”

They’re working through it, she says. She trusts him, something she hasn’t had in the past.

“I told him I’m at peace with how I’ve [played] over the past three weeks,” she says. “It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be better, but I’m no longer holding onto these unattainable goals for myself or expecting myself to be the player I was last year.”

She pauses.

“That doesn’t mean I’m producing how I would like to on the court. But I’m OK with that.”

She nods.

When the 2024 season began, Skinner was supposed to propel Texas to a third straight national title. Hell, even she might have expected that. But there she was on a September day in practice, finding out that she wasn’t doing well enough to be a six-rotation player.

She keeps wondering what has gone wrong. The more she wonders, the less confidence she has. She says she’s talking to herself more during matches. She used to jump in the air and let her body take over. Now her brain is getting in the way: Tip or hit, tip or hit, tip or hit?

“And I’m like, ‘Which one do I do?'” she says.

NIL deals keep pouring in. She poses for photos. Posts videos. She’s even in an ad for a hotel chain. She has been called the “face” of volleyball. She loves the platform volleyball has given her, but she feels like an imposter.

“Everyone’s like ‘Oh my gosh, you’re amazing.’ And I’m like, ‘I have been blessed with a gift. God has blessed me with the ability to be athletic, he gave me legs to jump high,'” she says. “Sometimes, I look at the trophies in my room and I’m like, ‘That was definitely [not me].'”

Hunt has been talking to her teammates about not relying on Skinner to solve all the team’s problems. It’s too much to ask of her.

“I want to be today’s version of Madi or this month’s version of Madi,” she says. “I don’t want to put that expectation on myself to get back to where I was.”

In certain moments, Skinner appears to love the game as much as you would expect of someone so gifted. She slams a ball and punches her fist in the air. But the joy is fleeting. So what if I got a kill? I’ve done that so many times.

Instead she finds happiness in her teammates’ accomplishments. She pumps her fist when Marianna Singletary makes a block. She shakes Rutherford in excitement after Rutherford delivers a monstrous kill.

Recently, Elliott reminded her that she doesn’t have to play pro if she doesn’t want to.

“Trust me,” Skinner responded. “I won’t play volleyball if I don’t want to.”

She thinks her purpose is to inspire young girls. Volleyball is just one way to do that. She could be a model, she could be an entrepreneur, she could be an influencer. She could dance. She could play piano. She can imagine a day — maybe it’s in a year, two years or five years, she’s not sure — when she walks away from volleyball. She’ll find something else to do.

“I’m missing the joy,” she says. “The enjoyment that comes from playing.”

MADI SKINNER WALKS into a sold-out Gregory Gym. Written on her finger tape is “faith over fear” and “MFS.” She feels lighter than she has in days. Texas libero Emma Halter stands next to her during warmups. Skinner leans over and tells her, “I feel more like myself today.” Halter holds her gaze and smiles.

Skinner looks splendid. She blasts a season-high 22 kills and hits .415. At one point in the fourth set, she has five straight kills. But Texas blows three match points and loses to Texas A&M in five sets.

Still, she walks into the locker room satisfied with her play. She looks her teammates in the eyes and tells them they competed well, and that they should be proud.

She returns to the gym and hugs her mom and stepsiblings, who have come to watch her play. Her dad said he was going to show, but he never did. She holds her stepsiblings’ hands and walks outside. Volleyball vanishes from her mind.

“Sometimes it’s just your job,” she says. “And it doesn’t mean you hate it, but you show up, you get the work done, then you go home and you pursue other things that make you happy.”

In her final seven games to close out the regular season, Skinner was reinstated as a six-rotation player and had four double-doubles and hit .354. She had a season-high 25 kills on Nov. 6 against Mississippi State. Texas, a No. 3 seed, will face Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in the first round of the NCAA tournament at home on Thursday. Once considered the favorite, Texas looks like a long shot to win its third straight title. But Skinner looks more and more like the 2023 version of herself. That alone gives the Texas dynasty a chance. Anything Madi touches turns to gold.

MADI SKINNER REMOVES her fluffy gray slippers in the lounge area of Practice Yoga Austin. “I feel really tight after last night,” she tells me. “This will help.”

The dim room has a mural of the Taj Mahal in the back and a wall of mirrors in the front. “This is so quaint,” Skinner says.

She unrolls her mat and lays a gray sweat towel on top of it. She sits down and crosses her legs. She places her hands on her thighs and closes her eyes. People fill up the space around her.

The teacher walks in.

“How are you? Are you OK?” he asks once everybody settles down.

Scattered, Skinner thinks. I feel overwhelmed, like I’ve been giving my attention to so many different things.

“Let’s take a deep breath in. Fill the body up. Linger at the top. Exhale,” he says.

Skinner sits up tall. Sucks in a breath of air. Exhales. Softens her shoulders.

“Tabletop, please,” he calls. Skinner moves to all fours, her eyes to the floor. She drops her belly and lifts her gaze. Then, arches her back and looks between her thighs.

Mountain pose. She stands her 6-foot-2 frame tall. Arms by her side. She’s the tallest — by far — in the room. She gazes at herself in the mirror. Her mind empties. Thank God. I’ve been craving quiet.

The teacher calls a vinyasa. Madi steps back to high plank. She lowers to the earth. Cobra. Her neck, shoulders and upper back lift up. She presses back, downward-facing dog.

My breath is entering my body. I feel my chest expand. I feel my belly become bigger. I feel the breath leaving.

After the fifth vinyasa, sweat glistens on her forehead. She doesn’t wipe it. That’s the trick to making sure her makeup lasts longer.

When the teacher calls Warrior II, Skinner sinks into her front knee, gazes between her front two fingers. A determined look. Her movements are lithe and strong all at once. She looks much like she does on a volleyball court. Fluid. Powerful.

The teacher reads from his phone.

“‘I am’ is a complete sentence,” he says.

At 7 p.m., Madi rolls up her mat. She walks outside and takes a deep breath.

“That was amazing,” she says. “I should do that more often.”

She walks back to her car, smiling. The respite from volleyball gives her hope. The yoga teacher’s words hang in the air. ‘I am’ is a complete sentence.

Volleyball practice starts at 9:30 the next morning. She’ll wrap her fingers and write MFS on the tape. She’ll try to believe.

I am a piano player. I am an influencer. I am a Texas volleyball star. I am a three-time national champion. I am Madi f—ing Skinner.