Lindsay Flory’s bags were all packed.
It was a big moment for her: her first travel volleyball tournament. The daughter of LSU’s volleyball coach was just 10 years old when she was getting ready to hit the road to play a sport she was quickly falling in love with.
There was just one problem.
“She forgot her volleyball stuff,” says Fran Flory, Lindsay’s head coach at LSU for the last four seasons and her mother for the last 22 years. “She packed her own bag and came in and said, ‘I’m packed, I’m ready to go.’ I said, ‘Okay, you got your uniform, your knee pads, your shoes?’ She said, ‘Wait a minute, I’ll be right back.’”
In the 12 years since, the Florys have journeyed across the country together, playing and coaching the sport they love. In the process, they’ve navigated one of the most difficult paths to manage at any level of sports: balancing mother-daughter and player-coach relationships.
“The biggest misconception would be that it’s strange or weird to us on the team,” says Lindsay, a senior setter who has 606 assists this season. “When we’re in the gym, it’s coach and player. When we’re at home, it’s mom and daughter. We try to keep them separated.”
That separation began early in their careers together, even before LSU. When Lindsay’s club coach left in the middle of a season, Fran took over on a temporary basis, putting the two together for the first time.
“After the first tournament,” Fran recalls, “we walked off the court, and I said, ‘If this doesn’t work for you, tell me today and I’ll quit. Because this is your career, not mine.’ She said, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ And she took three steps and stopped dead in her tracks and said, ‘I have one request. Can I call you Fran instead of Mom?’
“She set the standard at that moment: ‘You don’t have to be Mom on the volleyball court. You can be Fran on the volleyball court. And that’s a different person to me.’”
Had Fran had her way, Lindsay wouldn’t have even played volleyball. Fran put her daughter in tee ball and coaches’ pitch with the boys, but she didn’t love softball. Lindsay’s speed and stamina seemed suited for soccer, but her interests where elsewhere.
So were her talents.
“She sucked at everything else,” Fran jokes.
“I loved playing volleyball,” says Lindsay. “I wasn’t very good at the other sports. I could hit a baseball, but that’s about it. I just knew I wanted to play volleyball from such a young age. I knew that from the moment I started playing.”
By the time Lindsay became a college prospect, she was sure she wanted to leave Louisiana and play somewhere else. But on a visit to San Diego State, she realized LSU was the place for her.
“It just didn’t feel like home,” she says. “I kept comparing everything there to LSU, and my mom has always told recruits – I was so mad when I realized this – the place you compare every school to is probably the one you want to be at.”
LSU, it turns out, needed Lindsay, too – sooner than Fran hoped. At a match at Texas in her freshman season, Lindsay made her collegiate debut, but it took some serious convincing from assistant coach Jill Lytle Wilson to convince her head coach to make the switch.
“The setter that was playing was having a hard time, having an off match,” Fran remembers. “Jill said, ‘Fran, put Lindsay in.’ I said, ‘Hell no. She’s not going in. She’s not ready.’”
Wilson’s response was direct: “We don’t have a chance unless you put her in.
“If she was not my child, she would’ve been in the match earlier,” Fran says. “But I held her to a higher standard, because I didn’t want that perception.”
Lindsay recalls the moment well, too.
“I remember looking down the bench, and I swear, she was not going to put me in,” she laughs. “Our assistant coach Jill, I’m pretty sure, had to tell her to put me in.”
Once she took the floor, Lindsay let loose. The enormity of the moment hit her for a second – playing at Texas, where her mom won a national championship, as a freshman. Instead of giving in to the pressure, Lindsay simply played, realizing she had nothing to lose.
“Nothing fazed her,” Fran says. “She went in, made a couple plays immediately. I actually had to go stand at the end of the bench for a little bit. ‘My child is actually playing against Texas.’ It’s just a little surreal.”
Lindsay remembers blocking one of Texas’ outside hitters twice in a row and thinking she could retire at that very moment. This is the highlight of my life, she thought.
“I played pretty well, and we still lost,” Lindsay says. I was still really happy because I got to play in my first game and I played well. [Fran] came up to me and said, ‘I know you played well, but your team still lost. You should not be smiling.’ I don’t like being about myself and not being about the team, so it was a reality check.”
It was the last one Lindsay would need in her career. With Fran holding her to an admitted higher standard – a stated attempt to ensure there could be no doubts about nepotism – Lindsay shined. As a senior, she’s among the SEC leaders in assists and is tied for the team lead with 17 service aces. She’s peaked in her senior year, something Fran foresaw.
“She’s earned everything she’s gotten,” Fran says. “The coolest thing for me: there have probably been three days in four years that Lindsay Flory hasn’t brought everything she has to the gym. She never let the mom issues get in the way for her.”
The two still make space for their mother-daughter relationship, too. Every Sunday night, Fran calls Lindsay as Mom, just to check in.
The rest of the week? She’s Fran, and she’s tough on her setter.
Lindsay would have it no other way.
“I wanted her to be harder on me, just to earn that stance on the team,” Lindsay says. “I wanted to prove, ‘She’s not just a coaches’ daughter. She’s here because she deserves to be here.’”
