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Provo • In one of his first days on the job back in 2011, when getting to the NCAA Final Four was nothing but a far-fetched dream, BYU women's volleyball coach Shawn Olmstead made a recruiting pitch to a young phenom from Canada with out-of-this-world athletic ability and volleyball skills.
"Come to BYU," Olmstead told the young Alexa Gray, "and we are going to do something special."
Without any fanfare, publicity, hoopla or drawn-out recruiting battle, Gray simply said, "OK, sounds good to me."
Three years later, something special has indeed happened for the junior from Calgary, Alberta, and the rest of her teammates. Unseeded BYU has made it to the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, where it will play No. 2 seed Texas on Thursday (5 p.m. MST, ESPN2) in Oklahoma City, Okla.
Gray was the first high school player to commit to Olmstead, and she's more than lived up to her billing, earning West Coast Conference Player of the Year honors and shining in all four of BYU's tournament wins so far as the Cougars knocked off Seton Hall, No. 12 Arizona, No. 6 Florida State and No. 14 Nebraska.
"Coach told me if I signed with BYU, we were going to do great things," Gray said Tuesday at Smith Fieldhouse before the Cougars boarded a bus for the airport. "And I bought into it from day one."
Gray doesn't get the attention that two-sport star Jennifer Hamson receives, but she says she could not care less about that. A lot of BYU basketball fans are familiar with her because she is dating guard Anson Winder, who regularly attends volleyball matches in Provo.
She does care about building upon the athletic legacy of her parents, especially that of her mother, Stacey French, who died in a horrible automobile accident when Alexa was just 13 years old. Stacey, Alexa and Jordan, a sister who nows plays rugby for BYU, were traveling to their home late one night in 2008 when their car struck an elk on the highway. Alexa and Jordan survived after the car rolled several times, but their mother, a former Ricks College and Southern Utah University basketball player, did not.
"I am just trying to follow in her footsteps and in my dad's footsteps, too," Gray said. "They were both great athletes, had great careers."
Her father is Evric Gray, a former UNLV basketball star who currently lives in Salt Lake City and coaches a highly successful boys' summer-league all-star team, the Utah Rebels. He's also a member of the security staff at EnergySolutions Arena.
Alexa and Jordan moved in with their aunt and uncle, Shantel and Mike French, after their mother's death and joined the Mormon Church in 2009.
A couple years later, a BYU alumnus called Olmstead and told him about a Mormon kid from Canada who had won the Best Attacker/Best Spiker Award in Guatemala at a Norceca tournament.
"I saw some film on her, and I immediately got on the next flight to Canada," Olmstead said.
Obviously, he's glad he did.
Twitter: @drewjay —
Final Four NCAA volleyball lineup
At Chesapeake Energy Arena, Oklahoma City, Okla.
O Thursday's semifinal matches
• BYU vs. No. 2 Texas, 5 p.m. MST
• No. 5 Penn State vs. No. 1 Stanford, 7:30 p.m. MST
TV • ESPN2
O Saturday's championship
Semifinal winners, 5:30 p.m. MST