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BYU's Teon Taylor (21) attacks against Lewis during a men's college volleyball match at the Smith Fieldhouse on Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023.

Courtesy BYU Photo

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From left, BYU's Tyler Herget, Teon Taylor and Miks Ramanis rise up to block an attack against Concordia Irvine at the Smith Fieldhouse on Saturday, March 30, 2024.

Harold Mitchell, Special to the Herald

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BYU's Teon Taylor celebrates a sweep of Long Island in a men's college volleyball match at the Smith Fieldhouse on Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024.

Courtesy BYU Photo

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BYU's Miks Ramanis, left, and Teon Taylor show their emotions during Senior Night for men's volleyball at the Smith Fieldhouse on Saturday, March 30, 2024.

Courtesy BYU Photo

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If you want to get BYU men’s volleyball coach Shawn Olmstead talking non-stop, just ask him about Teon Taylor.

The Cougars senior middle blocker is a four-year starter who has quietly risen near the top of the school’s career record book. He’s fourth all-time in the rally scoring era in hitting percentage (.451), fifth in solo blocks (40), eighth in total blocks (360) and ninth in block assists (320). With 342 sets played, Taylor is just outside the top ten all-time in that category.

Basically, Olmstead put Taylor in the starting lineup as a redshirt freshman in 2022 and he stayed there.

“First off, you picked, hands down, the best guy to do a story on right now,” Olmstead said. “And let me tell you why. This is a kid who nobody recruited. Nobody. He played no club and nobody was talking to him. We didn’t even know about him.”

Taylor, who grew up in Las Vegas, was the Nevada Player of the Year in 2018 in volleyball and also played basketball for former Cougar Noah Hartsock at Centennial High School. But he didn’t play club volleyball and was very lightly recruited.

How did he end up at BYU?

Let Olmstead tell you.

“Teon sent us some e-mails, and as happens quite frequently, they just got lost in the mix,” Olmstead said. “We really do our best to filter them when we get them. We’ve got a system. There are other kids where we haven’t been able to get a good look at the film and it was the same with Teon.”

Terrie Nitta is a friend of the program and former BYU volleyball secretary whose daughter, Chelsea, was a statistician for the men’s and women’s program for nearly ten years. Terrie Nitta had actually worked at Centennial High School and knew Taylor and his mother, Wendy.

“So Teon’s mom started calling Terrie and saying, ‘Can you do me a favor? Can you please ask the coaches to watch Teon’s video?’ Terrie felt really awkward because that’s a tough spot, but she also knew I was pretty easy going. She said, ‘Hey, Shawn, can you do this?’ I told her I would.”

But Olmstead didn’t get around to watching the video.

“So he’s on his mission in Roseville, Calif., and his mother reaches out to Terrie again,” Olmstead said. “His mission is near the end and he’s already been accepted to BYU. She asked me to watch the video again, so we watch him.”

Olmstead and his coaching staff were immediately blown away.

“Not with the volleyball, but athletically,” Olmstead recalled. “We’re like, ‘Jeez, look at this athlete.'”

Olmstead started reaching out to his connections in Las Vegas. One coach said Taylor didn’t play club and was just a good athlete. Another connection told Olmstead, “Teon Taylor, the kid is a freak athlete, but, Shawn, he comes from just the best of the best families. He has a dad (Jamel) that works hard and was never given anything. He’s a landscape guy in Vegas that built his company on his own. If you can get this kid, you can can get him to do some things.”

Omstead went on: “It was at a time where we had an opportunity. Teon was coming to school anyway. Immediately (at practice) it wasn’t great, but we told him he could stick around and if he did things the right way, he could start to learn things.”

Soon Taylor started passing up teammates that had much more impressive resumes.

“Teon never had a bad attitude,” Olmstead said. “He never felt like he was entitled to anything. He’s such a sweet person I don’t know if it was ever ‘me against the world’ but he was unstoppable. He was unbelievably confident in himself but a very proper confidence.

“That’s what it was every day in practice and all of sudden, we’re like, ‘Hey, this kid is playing better than everybody.’ It was a no-brainer. The moment we got him on the court, he’s never come off.”

That was four seasons ago.

“Everybody adores Teon,” Olmstead said. “Everyone just thinks the world of that kid. You see him becoming what what he’s become on his own. He goes from a walk-on to probably one of our best scholarship kids and that’s honestly all him. I’m not a genius but I just gave him a chance and he took it. That dude, he’s got a great work ethic. He’s a great young man.”

Senior outside hitter Miks Ramanis echoed Olmstead’s evaluation of Taylor, and then some.

“The dude is a dog, an animal, a GOAT,” Ramanis said. “Some might say he’s all the animals. He’s the No. 1 middle blocker in the country and he’s the greatest hitter in the country. I can’t say anything bad about him. He’s very reserved and composed on the court, which is helpful to the team, especially when guys like me get sporadic, he just sticks to the basics. He sticks to the game plan and helps keep us all locked in.”

BYU (16-7) is ranked No. 7 in the country heading into Friday’s match against No. 12 Stanford at the Smith Fieldhouse. Taylor, who is married to former BYU setter Abby Taylor, is a biology major who plans to go into Heath Care Administration. Abby is currently a teacher at American Heritage School in American Fork.

As he nears the end of his collegiate career, Teon Taylor is reflective of his time in Provo.

“I’m just trying to enjoy every moment,” he said. “The Smith is a magical place, and I know it’s going to be sad to leave. So I’m just trying to make sure every game, every day, I stay in the moment and never take a moment for granted.

“My favorite thing about the team is just the love we have for each other on and off the court. We’re brothers at the core of it all. We can just hang out together, and nobody beefs, nobody has any animosity towards each other. I think that’s the best part and that makes it easy to play for these guys. We’ve got to play our best ball in April. We’re building for that, that’s what we’re trying to do every day.”