Vaughan helps Burnet succeed, enjoys a good laugh in the locker room
When a game gets heated, the senior middle hitter can take over a contest with her intensity and execution like she did recently in a furious rematch with Liberty Hill.
Burnet was on the verge of an unmerciful sweep when Vaughan put the team on her shoulders with an outstanding overall performance to re-ignite the Lady Dawgs and engineer a win.
Though intense on the court, she is light-hearted away from the game. Grounded strongly in her beliefs, Vaughan says she never allows herself to be negatively influenced.
“I’ve learned that life often is not fair,” she said. “But we get past it and we go on.”
She was elected secretary of her senior class and would like to get into the medical field and possibly become a trauma nurse. In 20 years, she said her classmates would remember her as the “ditzy one” because she often struggles to understand jokes or pranks, but absolutely loves the music it brings to her heart.
The more she has to think about the punchline of a joke or prank, the more her face rearranges itself. Her eyes widen, wander and wonder. Her brow rises but her lips remain tightly sealed.
On a close knit team loaded with talented pranksters, there is little wonder she loves the game behind the game.
“Sometimes I laugh so hard, I cry,” said Vaughan, a Burnet native who is a team captain and one of the catalysts of this year’s playoff-bound squad in District 8-3A. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the sport, and we have had some great games, but it’s the special bond — the friendships — that have been my greatest memories.”
A team outing at Lake Travis a couple of years ago where everybody got ill rekindled some unusual and hilarious recollections. The locker jokes and pranks, however, have been the best part of being on a team.
However, there also have been emotional and physical struggles in her high school athletic trek. As usual, Vaughan has leaned on longtime friend and teammate Laila El-Far, who has been her “encourager,” and her own mother Allison Vaughan, a former Burnet twirler, as her emotional rock.
Both mother and daughter are quiet-natured while her dad, Gary Vaughan, a former baseball player, has been her perpetual and personal armchair coach.
Her brother, Justin Vaughan, a former distance runner at Burnet, served as her early role model.
“I wanted to be just like him,” Vaughan said about her brother, who was devoted to his sport. “He’s my best friend.”
As a tall, skinny and unsure seventh-grader, she first started playing in volleyball competitions at the insistence of friends and surprised herself.
“I found out that I was better than I thought and volleyball was fun,” she said.
She also learned that being just like her brother, a long-distance runner, was not for her. Instead of laboring in grueling races, she opted for competing in the field events and relays in track and basketball, along with participating in volleyball. After a serious leg injury in the 10th grade after basketball season, she committed herself to only one sport.
Under the watchful eye of former coach Julie J. Brown, Vaughan said her game improved tremendously.
“I loved coach Brown,” she said. “She really pushed me to become better.”
Impressed with this ambitious athlete, Brown awarded Vaughan with the Battling Bulldog Award for her energy and effort and named her the team’s offensive player of the 2007 season.
Now in her third varsity year, Vaughan has become a strong, positive leader of the team and an impact player in the front row under coach Bethany Grissom, whom the Burnet senior highly praises.