Rattay Caps Volleyball Career With All State Honor — Three-Year Starter Leaves Mark on Program

When head coach Andrue Brown gathered his Lady Pioneer volleyball team together he told them the moment was a big deal.

He was right.

On Tuesday, May 12, Brown presented Stillwater High School senior Taylor Rattay with her Oklahoma Coaches Association All State jacket in front of her teammates. It was the first All State selection of Brown's three seasons leading the program and the culmination of a career Rattay had spent years building toward.

"This whole year, I was like, I need to be All State," Rattay said. "I want it so bad."

She was not kidding.

Rattay finishes her Pioneer career as one of the most accomplished defensive players in program history. A three-year varsity starter with 87 career starts, she ranks third all-time at Stillwater High in career digs with 1,025 and third all-time in single-season digs with 537, set during the 2025 season. She also sits fourth all-time in career aces with 147. Beyond the stat sheet, Rattay earned the AVCA Best and Brightest Award in 2025, was a two-time AVCA Team Academic Award recipient in 2024 and 2025, earned AVCA All Region honors in 2025, and served as team captain.

For Brown, the selection validated something he had known long before the statistics confirmed it.

"Taylor is a great volleyball player, but she's an even better person," Brown said. "There's not going to be another Taylor Rattay in our program. She is the standard for what you hope to have as a coach."

The journey to that standard began reluctantly.

Rattay grew up a basketball player. It took some convincing from her mother, Allison, to get her into a gymnasium for a different reason.

"I had to force her to play," Allison Rattay said. "I was literally like, you're going to love this sport. Just try it. And she was like, no."

Taylor relented. The family was living in Virginia at the time, and she gave volleyball a shot. The potential was immediate. She skipped the underhand serve entirely and went straight to an overhand. But it was not until the family moved to Stillwater that something shifted.

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She made a top volleyball club team in the state, eventually joining Oklahoma Charge, and that was the moment her mother said Taylor stopped playing to have fun and started playing to be great.

"That's when she realized that this is what she wanted to do," Allison Rattay said.

Taylor's club coaches at Oklahoma Charge played a significant role in her development.

"I had some very good coaches that pushed me," Rattay said. "My club coaches really brought the best out of me."

What followed was a three-year varsity career defined as much by what does not appear in a box score as what does. In her career, Rattay missed two games, both due to a concussion, and in Brown's telling, she would have played through those, too, given the choice.

"She doesn't miss practice, she doesn't miss the game, she doesn't miss encouraging someone," Brown said. "She's going to give her max effort in everything."

That presence extended beyond the court. Brown said Rattay still stops him in the hallway to say hello, even after her playing days ended last fall. She shows up for her younger teammates the same way she always did when she was on the floor beside them.

"Getting to have her from seventh grade to her senior year, she's like one of my own kids," Brown said. "I just love that kid to death."

Fellow senior Lillian Jeffries saw it up close for four years.

"It's a joy to play with her, honestly," Jeffries said. "She's very deserving of this."

What Jeffries said the program will miss most is harder to quantify than digs or aces.

"Definitely her joy," Jeffries said. "She's very contagious. She knows how to brighten people's day, make people laugh. She's a good balance — definitely a team leader, but also always making people feel good about themselves."

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Rattay said she never thought much about individual legacy. She thought about her teammates.

"Playing for them is probably the funnest part," Rattay said. "When we do good as a team, it's just kind of magical."

Wearing the All State jacket brought those emotions into focus. It felt like an ending.

"It feels good," Rattay said. "But it kind of makes me sad because I'm like, I'm never going to play again."

She will have one more chance to compete. Rattay will represent Stillwater in the Oklahoma Coaches Association All State Volleyball Game on Monday, July 27, at 6 p.m. at Hamilton Field House on the University of Central Oklahoma campus in Edmond. Brown said the team plans to make the trip to watch her play.

After that, Rattay heads to Oklahoma State University in the fall, where she plans to rush a sorority and figure out the rest as she goes.

Her advice to the players who will fill the gym without her next season is as straightforward as the way she played.

"Just keep trying," Rattay said. "You just have to have confidence in yourself. And honestly, you have to have fun. Because if you're playing volleyball and not having fun, there's no reason. Why would you be doing something all the time if you don't love it?"