Keeping selected to elite team

Wake Forest commit reaching for her goals

 

IMLAY CITY — USA Volleyball’s National Team Development Program has a motto on its website’s landing page — “Best with Best.”

Not only does this indicate the prestige and rigor of this program, but it fully describes Imlay City High School’s own Emma Keeping — a junior athletic standout and Wake Forest commit who attended the NTDP training program this past Valentine’s Day in Kansas City, Missouri.

Keeping, a setter with the club volleyball team Michigan Elite and ICHS star athlete, was selected to participate in this invite-only opportunity by her club coaches as well as coaches with Team USA.

The NTDP serves as a pipeline for Olympic volleyball prospects, and this particular training camp hosted 75-80 athletes, some of whom are currently on the National Team as well as new hopefuls.

Keeping noted that the athletes participating in this program were all from the 2007 – 2009 birth year group.

Throughout the day, there were 10-12 courts holding matches with 40 college coaches and Team USA coaches all scouting for their next prospective Olympic hopeful.

Keeping, who will graduate with the ICHS Class of 2026, has committed to Wake Forest for volleyball and hopes to study either Business or Health and Exercise Science. Emma is not only a student of the game, but she is an exceptional scholar as well.

She currently holds a 4.0 unweighted GPA, takes a course load filled with dual enrollment and AP classes, and is also a prominent member of ICHS’s Tennis and Bowling teams.

Emma credits her family, mom Jessica and dad Bryan, with being a source of inspiration and support as they “have given her every opportunity and every resource” to be her best.

But what really sets Emma Keeping apart — what makes her the “best with the best” — is not just her competitiveness, not just her confidence, not just her unwavering determination, skill, and dedication.

She puts her team’s success ahead of her own personal accolades, she prioritizes “we” ahead of “me,” and she does so with a fierceness that exudes pure joy.

Keeping will return to action this summer with Wake Forest training camps before joining her fellow Spartans for her senior season of high school volleyball this fall.