An unfortunate one-eyed, amputee feline greeted Tom Hilbert on a recruiting trip he will never forget. The recruit, Tessa Nelson, was a typical Colorado State volleyball prospect — tall, rangy, with raw talent and limitless potential. Her family farm in Minnesota, which doubled as an animal-rescue organization, was anything but typical.
“The home visit took me by surprise,” the CSU coach said. “All the animals there were either hurt or injured.”
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as Hilbert recalls. Nelson said the cat Hilbert described as having two missing legs actually had only one missing limb. She and her mom helped nurse abandoned and injured pets back to health with the help of local veterinarians, and then assisted in finding them new homes.
Hilbert’s peers were just starting to discover Nelson, who played club volleyball. As a selling point, he could promise an annual trip to the NCAA Tournament, but Hilbert had one more card to play — CSU’s renowned veterinary school.
Fortunately for the Rams’ volleyball program, Nelson’s two-time, all-Mountain West playing career lasted longer than her pre-vet major.
“I was not very good at science,” she admits now.
There will be a Nelson family reunion, and then some, when CSU (25-5) visits Minneapolis tonight for the NCAA volleyball Sweet 16 to play Minnesota (26-8). Kentucky (29-4) plays Florida State (30-2) in the other game.
“This is the most winnable regional we’ve ever been in,” Hilbert said of the Rams’ fifth trip to the Sweet 16. “I don’t want to sound like the teams are not good. There’s just no juggernaut in there.”
Nelson, a 6-foot-2 redshirt senior middle blocker, has no personal grudge against her home-state school. She said she was overwhelmed by the big city and would have chosen CSU even if Minnesota had recruited her aggressively.
Hilbert is fine with the Rams’ underdog status, saying, “You get in trouble sometimes when you say you have to win.”
