As the line of hundreds of fans shuffled by with posters to sign, a young girl and her mother stopped in front of then-junior Louisville volleyball player Amaya Tillman.
“My daughter always says she’s your twin because you look like her,” the mother told Tillman.
Tillman stopped and looked at the girl. “Wow,” Tillman thought. “She really does look like me.”
The power of that moment struck Tillman.
“It hits differently when it’s a little girl that looks like you, has the same skin color, same hair as you,” she said. “It shows the impact of being a good representation for Black and biracial girls.”
Tillman thought about what she represented to that young girl. Yes, Tillman embodied athletic excellence. But she was also a great student, an avid reader, a people-first leader. She wanted to show that girl that she could represent more than just an athlete.
“They look up to you because they look like you. You’re representing who they could be in the future,” she said.
More than a year later, Tillman looked at a blank sheet of paper and thought about who she was.
The sheet already had an outline of a sports jersey, and the speaker at the NCAA Career in Sports Forum asked participants to design the jersey to represent themselves.
As a Louisville volleyball student-athlete, Tillman had a list of accolades that could fill the jersey. Two-time Atlantic Coast Conference Defensive Player of the Year. All-American. A member of a national championship runner-up team. Elite 90 award winner. The list could go on.
Yet the caveat to the exercise? She had to design the jersey based on her identity outside of her sport.
She drew a sunflower to represent her hometown of Topeka, Kansas.
As an avid reader, she sketched a book.
She added a symbol of Peter Pan to represent childlike wonder.
She included her teammates’ nickname for her, “Ashay,” because she knew a piece of her would always be an athlete.
“That session really resonated with me, really stuck in my head, because volleyball was kind of my life. I needed someone to tell me that I was more than just an athlete,” she said.
“That was my light bulb moment.”
Tillman attended the Career in Sports Forum her senior year after wrapping up a dominant volleyball career.
“Amaya has been one of the most influential players for Louisville volleyball in
the last decade,” coach Dan Meske said.
She had agents reaching out to her, offers to play professionally and many fans excited to continue to watch her play.
Yet the idea of playing professional volleyball did not excite her. After finishing her undergraduate degree and four years of volleyball, she decided to end her career as an athlete. She did not take her fifth year and decided against professional volleyball. “Literally no one understood,” she recalled.
“I was on the journey to realizing that a lot of times in sports, academics and what student-athletes do off the court can get overlooked,” she said. “I needed to hear who I am is more important than what I do.”
Tillman began mapping out her interests and visualizing her future. Upon reflection and conversations with trusted advisors, Tillman figured out what she wanted: a role where she could build strong relationships with student-athletes and help them discover their identities outside sport.
“I just want to make sure we’re preparing athletes at every stage in life, not just playing their sport,” she said. “College athletics is the greatest human development tool.”
After she completed her degree in sports administration, the deputy athletics director at Louisville offered Tillman a graduate assistant role as an academic advisor for the football team.
In that role, she formed strong relationships with the football players. When the players walked into her office, Tillman said the conversation topics could range from academics to playing time to girl problems. Yet regardless of the content of the conversation, she mentored the players to be the best versions of themselves.
“It really affirmed how much I love helping student-athletes. It’s developing them as humans,” she said.
Tillman’s decision to follow a path of student-athlete development made sense to those around her.
“Amaya’s continued commitment to serving student-athletes is no surprise. She is a true leader who puts others’ success before her own. I can’t wait to see the impact she’ll have on the future of college sports,” Meske said.
Currently, Tillman works in leadership development as part of the NCAA Postgraduate Internship Program. It’s a full-circle moment for her because it was a leadership development program, the Career in Sports Forum, that sparked her passion to follow her current path.
Through her work in leadership development, Tillman has supported programming for student-athletes, administrators and coaches.
“Amaya is a bridge for us. She’s had a taste of being an elite athlete and serving student-athletes, so she helps us understand what we should be looking for and how to build it into our curriculum,” said Mark Trumbo, Tillman’s supervisor.
“Amaya is transparent with how she feels about things. I wasn’t a student-athlete, so I need someone like her to give me the real understanding of what the lived student-athlete experience looks like,” Trumbo added. “She is passionate and very intrinsically motivated.”
For her part, Tillman is grateful for the support she has received as she transitions into her career.
“I’m thankful I have a team that respects all aspects of me,” she said. “They don’t just see me as someone who played in a national championship, and they also don’t just see me as someone who works in leadership development. They see me as a human being, and they really care about us here.”
For now, Tillman plans to have a career developing players, whether it’s through coaching, student-athlete development or player development. She said her motto is “people first.”
“I really want to go into development, because there’s so much more to an athlete as a human being,” she said. “We see their highlights and we know how many hours they put in in the gym, but there’s so much more as people.
“I just want to make sure we always have coaches or administrators that care about the student-athlete as a human being first,” she added. “People are multifaceted. We bring so many identities with us to campus, whether it’s your sexual orientation, gender, your family background. All your different beliefs and identities you carry can get overlooked when you’re just always identifying as a student-athlete.”
Tillman said she prioritizes holistic development for student-athletes.
“No matter if you’re playing pro or you’re transitioning to the workforce, you have to find something that you identify with outside of your sport so you don’t only see yourself as an athlete,” she said. “There’s more to us than that.”
