Senior setter Molly Kreklow has guided No. 7 Missouri (30-0, 14-0 SEC) to the nation’s best record.
She ranks second in the nation in assists per set (12.67), has tallied 5,090 assists over nearly four seasons and has ushered the Tigers to the best hitting percentage in the county (.360).
But for an athlete so unflappable, Kreklow isn’t as flawless as opponents may believe.
Kreklow is a master with hand-eye coordination on the court, but she’s terrible at playing video games. She can’t juggle, win thumb wars or bloody knuckles. She can’t build a sturdy bench, draw or paint cohesively. She’s from Minnesota, but she’s bad at snowboarding. Her family lives on a golf course, but she needs to use a tee — even on the fairway.
She laughs in serious team huddles, fumbles when she plays soccer and flounders when she swims. She travels constantly for away matches, but can’t sleep comfortably far from home. When she goes on vacations, she nearly always gets injured. Once, her family hiked up a mountain, and she sprained her ankle, so her brothers had to carry her back down.
She trips often, like when she accepts awards. Then she has to speak in public — she’s not too fond of that, either — while all she wants to do is veer from being the center of attention. Once, before she turned 10, she withdrew from a piano recital because there would be a crowd.
Kreklow, who precisely sets the ball from seemingly anywhere on the court, is bad at multitasking. She procrastinates. She’s disorganized — “organized chaos” is what she calls it — and she _barely_ makes it on time to anywhere she goes.
She has recently suppressed her hamartia, a rabid sweet tooth, but she still has TV shows binges during the volleyball season. She’s already watched 10 seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy” this fall.
But Kreklow doesn’t do those things when she’s ready to play. She departs from her messy car, walks tall and steadily, and steps onto the court to do what she does best.