In a certain sense, it was inevitable that Zoe Thiros would fall in love with volleyball.

Don't get it wrong. She wanted to play basketball and soccer, and eventually did — the contact and athleticism appealed to her, and new challenges were always welcome. But somehow, the Pocatello native always found her way back to the net.

An audacious outside hitter in her sophomore year at Gonzaga, Thiros brings an intense energy to the court, a competition-honed focus buoyed by an air of relentless positivity. She is deliberate and methodical moving up and down the court, but as her teammate Sarah Penner said, there's no challenge Thiros will back down from.
"She's a gamer — she just goes off," Bulldogs Head Coach Diane Nelson said. "She has this side to her that's like, 'I'll just figure out how to get this job done.' And she kept showing up when we needed it."

Nelson knows exactly where it comes from. She sees the similarities.

"I mean, for one, her mom's Wonder Woman," she laughed, the way someone says that water is wet.

A longtime coach and player in Pocatello, Zoe's mother Pauline Thiros was a star of the unquestionable variety at Idaho State University. Coming to Pocatello in 1990 as a walk-on volleyball player, her teammates voted her as captain her freshman fall, and again three more times until she graduated. She was magnetic and driven, earning Big Sky all-academic honors in her junior and senior seasons and being named the Big Sky Conference Scholar Athlete of the year in 1994 — honors that ultimately led to her induction into the ISU Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.

Pauline is now the Director of Athletics at Idaho State, where she has worked in various capacities for over two decades — a list of roles that at this point is almost too extensive to give justice. She has previously been the Director of Planned Giving, Director of Alumni Relations, and an assistant volleyball coach and recruiting coordinator. She also directed ISU's first capital campaign, which kicked off in 2001 and raised more than $152 million and resulted in the construction of a new performing arts center on campus — all while coaching volleyball in various forms.

Zoe was never too far away from a volleyball as a result, but it wasn't long before it became impossible for her to keep herself away. She used to tag along at practices, hanging out on the sidelines until she became old enough to finesse her way into team drills. Her mother's initial resistance eventually gave way as she realized that the game was drawing her daughter in just like it did her.

"I was pretty blessed growing up with a parent as a coach," Zoe said. "That's a really unique relationship that I know only a few other girls have."

Pauline eventually coached Zoe in club as well as her the first two seasons of high school, but she stepped down later in the spring of Zoe's sophomore year as her husband Danny's cancer fight intensified, saying "we had a battle to fight at home." Being a mother for her kids was more important than anything that could transpire on a court.

Danny would pass away that September, leaving Pauline, Zoe and her then-12-year-old brother Constantine with an empty place in their home and waves of emotion and turmoil to reconcile with. For the first time in their lives, they were all each other had.

It's not a topic they discuss often, but that's not because the absence wasn't felt.

"Zoe doesn't dwell on what is missing, she's focused on what is present," Pauline said. "That resilience is something in her I admire. She's stoic, which leaves people not knowing what to think of her sometimes.  But believe me, still waters run deep.

"She understands loss. She just chooses not to live in it."

   
Years out of coaching now, Pauline said she relishes simply being an observer rather than a participant. She hasn't looked back once.

"Now, all I have to do is sit back and be mom and watch and enjoy," she said. "It's a great thing to sit back and see her get more information, more instruction, more of what she needs to be really great, and it takes it all off my shoulders."

There was plenty to watch in Zoe's senior year of high school, where she led the Diamondbacks to a 37-5 record and the Class 4A state championship, recording 450 kills, 380 digs, 69 blocks and 57 service aces.

 Along with being named Idaho's Gatorade State POY, Zoe also was named Idaho State Journal Player of the Year and First-Team All-State for the third consecutive year.

"[She] elevated her game to a different level this year," said Kamille Crawford, coach at Middleton High, back in 2018. "She dominates no matter where she is on the court; she's a force in the front row and the back row. She's a six-rotation kid who impacts the game tremendously."

At that point, the Thiros' were wading in a sea of accolades and offers. And although Pauline said Gonzaga was attractive in a "million different ways" when Nelson first offered a scholarship, Zoe waited to explore her options and take some time "to just be a kid." And when she finally did commit to GU, Pauline said there was one question she was asked that made her laugh.

"Everybody would say, 'Well, don't you feel great? She's following in your footsteps playing collegiate volleyball,'" she said.

Pride wells in her voice as she remembers her response.

"Oh man, she is slamming footsteps into the ground that I never even came close to."

   

During Zoe's freshman year at GU, Pauline made a commitment: She would be there for every one of Zoe's games possible. She wouldn't worry about the details of flights at the last minute or the logistics of her packed schedule. If she could be there, she would — and if she couldn't, she'd still find a way to watch somehow.

 "She's very to-the-point and she knows what she wants, but at the same time, she's my biggest fan," Zoe said. "I mean, she didn't miss a game, whether she was on the football sidelines and watching it on her phone or there in person.

"She just shows up, she's there, she's committed. She really demonstrates that in every aspect of her life."

That year, Nelson watched as Zoe carved out an increasing role as the season went on, eager for a starting role despite her age.

"She's not fazed," Nelson said. "If we're down by a lot, she's just kinda like, 'What do you want me to do, coach?' She doesn't get frantic. She's really composed in that regard."

   

Zoe is now headed into a year without as many of the strange firsts of being a freshman collegiate athlete, but that composed optimism has never been more pivotal. This will still likely be her strangest season yet, with a fall season pushed to the spring and uneasiness abound in the space between. A spring semester that ended abruptly and a summer largely spent away from teammates excoriated that uneasiness — the sudden removal of the structure she had lived her whole life with is hard to deal with.

"Being away from that team environment for so long from March until about June, July, you really just realize how big of a hole you kind of have in your life when that thing that is kind of like a job isn't there," Zoe said.

It's not easy for Pauline in Pocatello either, where the pandemic has stifled her department and forced her to be creative in envisioning a spring where fall and spring sports have to share venues and resources concurrently.

"I think it's just one of the lessons in athletics we have to learn," Pauline said. "And [Zoe's] accepting that this is the moment we're in. I've been really proud of her just witnessing that. One hundred percent of her energy right now is going toward 'How can I use this moment to get better?' It's a really good way to look at this because there's not a lot we can do to change the moment."

   

Pauline joked that Zoe's rapid improvement with different coaches is maybe indicative of her "limitations as a coach," despite a 268-39 career record and being named as the IHSAA 4A Coach of the Year seven times. Not to mention that during that span, Pauline's teams won six consecutive state championships from 2010 to 2015— the last being during Zoe's freshman year.

That 2015 championship rings most clearly still for both women, perhaps because it was Pauline's most difficult to win and Zoe's only one with her mother as coach.

That year, Century had lost six seniors to graduation, including two-time Gatorade POY Kayla Ellis. Another one of their most experienced attackers, Sarah Grinnell, was out to a broken leg. In hindsight, a sixth-straight championship seemed like a longer shot considering the poor circumstances.

But at game point of the fifth set of the 2015 title game, with a championship on the line, Pauline called for a short serve from Zoe to seal the game. Those who have seen volleyball know that a short serve is a potentially queasy proposition for any player in crunch time, and especially so for a freshman in high school at the biggest stage for the first time.

"I just remember her looking at me like, 'Please, please, make this,'" Zoe said.

But an unrestrainable smile grows on both the mother and daughter's faces as Zoe remembers her response, just before nailing the championship-winning serve, at all of 15 years old.

"I got you, Mom."
 
   

Zoe won again as a senior, and Pauline herself had obviously won plenty of times before. But both agreed that 2015 championship was their favorite moment together.

Not their favorite volleyball memory; not their favorite as a coach-player duo. Their favorite together.

Because volleyball is what the two share, but that's a shallow way to see it. For the Thiros', the game is less of a singular interest and more of a channel through which the two strengthen their bond — an entry point by which they seek more out of themselves and each other, all through the prism of the sport they both have loved their whole lives.

On paper, it's what's kept them side-by-side for all these years. But it takes more than just a shared sport to do that.

Pauline said it best: "It makes it easy when they love something that you love too."