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Kristen McDaniel isn't one to shy away from responsibility. 

Not that she really has much of a choice.

After all, the 2019 Iolani graduate is in her third season with the North Carolina State women's volleyball team this fall and her second as the starting setter. 

McDaniel says that providing leadership for the Wolfpack is a role she's more than comfortable filling. 

"I definitely think being a leader — especially as a setter — is really important and just making sure that I keep my team together," she said via a zoom interview Monday morning. 

It all starts with effective communication. 

"I'm always talking on and off the court and just making sure that I'm holding not only others accountable on my team, but myself as well," McDaniel expressed. "Making sure that I can find ways and build relationships with my teammates, because everyone responds differently, so just making sure I build those relationships with them and making sure that I use them appropriately, no matter where we are in the game."

McDaniel has thoroughly enjoyed her time at NC State, which is the largest university in the Carolinas and located in the city of Raleigh. She was originally committed to the University of Oklahoma when she was still in high school, but a coaching change there led her to re-open her recruitment.

Eventually, McDaniel found a new home in NC State, a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The coach who recruited McDaniel there made the effort to come to Hawaii to watch her play live. 

"I just really liked the whole team dynamic and just the whole sense of family — and family is obviously a really big thing back home — so like the whole cliche, I wanted to feel at home away from home and that's just kind of how I felt," McDaniel reflected. "I really liked the staff and the people that were working around us, like the academic advisors, athletic trainers, nutrition people — I just all thought that it was a really good fit for me."

In her freshman season, McDaniel shared the setting duties — she was second on the team with 228 assists — and also played as a defensive specialist, tallying 128 digs. 

"We were going in between a 5-1 and 6-2 (offense) kind of thing with our other setter," she recalled. "But just being able to see the different kinds of players and how they were trained, it was definitely a little hard at first, but really I just had to keep sticking with it and just keeping an open mind with learning a lot of new things, so it was actually good; I really enjoyed it."

With summer training and the women's volleyball season in the fall, there wasn't much time for McDaniel to get homesick during that first year of college. 

"I think I was just so busy with volleyball, workouts, meetings, film and all that stuff that I didn't really miss home that much, but I found time to FaceTime my parents every day and kind of just catch up with everyone back home, so that was nice," she explained. 

And if it wasn't volleyball, school certainly kept McDaniel busy — although her time at Iolani did well to prepare her for the academic rigors of college. 

"The academic transition wasn't too bad; Iolani definitely prepared me academically," McDaniel laughed. "But it's nice having a lot of resources. We have tutors, we have a whole bunch of resources that we didn't really have back in high school to help me, especially with time management and being on the road all the time, so it definitely helped and it's still pretty manageable and easy."

As a sophomore last year, McDaniel took over the primary setting position and started all 17 matches. She opened the season with five straight matches where she bested her career-high mark in assists. Her 602 assists on the year ranked fourth in the ACC, while her 9.87 assists per set was fifth in the conference. 

"I think sophomore year really helped me find who I am as a person and as a leader," said McDaniel, who was also second on the team in digs with 178 that season (2.92 per set). "I kind of tried to figure my way out and how I could help my team, so I definitely think that year and taking over as the starting setter was something that I really looked forward to. It was a really big challenge and I thought that I could do it."

North Carolina State went 8-9 in the 2020 season, its first under Luka Slabe, who was hired to lead the program in February of that year. McDaniel said the addition of Slabe — who has served as the head coach of the Slovenian men's national team in addition to being an assistant with USA Volleyball — has made a world of difference.  

"It's definitely been a really big upgrade in our gym. Between his experience with (Team) USA, the Slovenian national team, he played at BYU and coached at BYU, so definitely he has a lot of credibility," McDaniel said. "He's very good at what he does. He knows what he's talking about and I definitely think that he's made a lot of changes in this program, very big, positive changes and I think that we're headed in the right direction with where we need to go, especially how he wants to change and really rebuild this program and made it great, so I really love him as a coach."

The Wolfpack posted a 7-9 record in conference last season to finish ninth (out of 15 teams) in the final ACC standings. They were tabbed for a 10th-place finish in a preseason poll of conference coaches this summer. 

But for McDaniel and the rest of her teammates, they simply chalk it up as more outside noise. 

"We don't really pay attention to that stuff as much," she noted. "We try to just focus on what we're doing as a team, not really about what people are saying because really, even in the preseason, there's been a lot of upsets, so rankings don't necessarily mean a whole bunch to us. We kind of just tell ourselves that if we trust our system and continue to be consistent with it, the rewards will end up coming later."

The 2021 season got off to a bit of a rough start for NC State, which dropped its first three matches before it won six of its next seven matches to bounce back. 

The Wolfpack completed the non-conference portion of their schedule with a record of 6-5. They opened up ACC play over the weekend with a four-set win over Virginia Friday, in which McDaniel registered 42 assists, 10 digs, three kills and a block. On Sunday, they were swept by Pittsburgh, the No. 4 team in the American Volleyball Coaches Association national rankings and the preseason favorite to win the ACC. 

"I think we're off to a good start," McDaniel assessed. "It was definitely nice opening up ACC with a win for the first game and I definitely think we competed against Pitt better than we have for the past couple years, so I think just being able to stick with the kind of system that we're running and everything that we learned, if we just keep working on it and staying together as a team, I think that definitely will help us throughout the rest of the season."

The Panthers won by set scores of 25-23, 25-20 and 25-18 to improve to 12-0 overall and 2-0 in the ACC. One of their two setters is junior Lexis Akeo (Kamehameha '19 of Kapolei), who tallied 15 assists, six digs and an ace in the win. 

McDaniel and Akeo — whose Iolani and Kamehameha teams faced off for the Division I state championship in all four of their seasons of high school volleyball — got a chance to reconnect after the match. 

"We talk about it all the time how it's so crazy how we played, setting against each other for four years of high school, all four state championships and then we go ahead and find ourselves both in the ACC on the east coast, so it's kind of funny how two Hawaii girls are playing in the ACC," McDaniel said. "That's definitely a big accomplishment for the both of us, especially coming from Hawaii, so we always talk about it all the time. After the game we probably spent thirty minutes talking, like, ‘oh my God, how did we end up here?' "

Pitt — which moved up two spots to No. 2 in this week's AVCA top 25 — sits alone in first place atop the ACC standings, while NC State is one of six teams at 1-1 after the first weekend of the season. McDaniel is clear in regards to the team's biggest goals this fall. 

"Our goal is to win ACC and go to the (NCAA) tournament as well, since we haven't been there in a really long time," she said. 

The Wolfpack have not qualified for the NCAA tournament since 2017, when they reached the second round before being swept by Texas. 

"That's been our really big goal and if we really want to be in that kind of spot, we're going to need to compete and be able to learn how to play with these kinds of teams, so there's definitely a lot of good things to take over from the weekend," McDaniel added. 

McDaniel, who earned All-ACC Academic honors in June, is scheduled to graduate with a bachelor's degree in human biology in the spring of 2023. She hopes to pursue a career in nursing. 

"I always knew that I wanted to do something in the medical field. I like science, I like math and I think that being in the medical field and being able to help people, I think that's one thing that I really want to do. I think that kind of profession, I think you need people that genuinely care about people and want to do something to help better others, so I definitely think that is a good career path for me," McDaniel said. 

McDaniel and the Wolfpack will continue ACC play this weekend with matches at Florida State Friday and at Miami Sunday.