Kady Collins at the net

 

 

By Mike London

Salisbury Post

SALISBURY — Not many teenage athletes have “state tournament MVP” on their list of accomplishments.

Recent East Rowan graduate and soon-to-be Pfeiffer University student-athlete Kadynce Collins can honestly say that she does.

Kadynce is “Kady” to her friends. She has a lot of those.

Collins was voted the student with the biggest heart at East Rowan. There are a couple of reasons for that, but the most obvious is she still pushes through every day with a smile and a positive attitude, even though she lost her father, Marc Collins, to cancer when she was a middle schooler.

“My dad is the one who got me started in sports,” Collins said. He was more than my dad. He was my coach. He was my trainer. He was the reason I played sports, and he is still the reason. Every time I’ve played a game for East Rowan — basketball, volleyball or softball — I was playing for him. I was very blessed to have him as a role model.”

Collins played every position on the softball field growing up. She was a serious talent as a utility player. In a perfect world, Collins might have become a 6-foot-3 softball phenom, but scoliosis limited her growth to being a 6-footer, and there have been lots of back issues to overcome.

Her days of smashing softballs — she was the 2021 Junior Lady Legion state tournament MVP after a 9-for-14 performance — seem like something that happened a lifetime ago.

“My junior softball season I was swinging and felt a pop in my back,” Collins said. “I looked at my mom (Donna) in the stands and shook my head. I knew it was bad. It turned out to be a stress fracture.”

As a senior on the softball field, Collins’ mother, who works at the VA Medical Center, was always there to support her, but Collins didn’t get to swing the bat at all for the Mustangs. Her back limited her to playing defense as the flex player, usually second base or center field.

While softball was everything for a long time for Collins, she started showing basketball potential in elementary school and made the East varsity as a freshman.

Her senior season she played in constant pain and with her back braced, but she never made any excuses. She was second team all-county. She averaged 10.3 points per game as a senior and finished her career with 611 points.

Collins played with feistiness in the paint on defense. One of the things her father used to tell her was that she had five fouls and couldn’t take them home with her. She cheerfully used a lot of them on heavier opponents. On offense, she was a matchup problem, a 6-footer who could shoot 3-pointers like a guard. She had a 23-point game and a 21-point game.

She played in 27 of East’s 28 games as a senior. A concussion kept her out of the Christmas Tournament championship game, but Collins did a lot to help the Mustangs win their first two games in that tournament.

Collins didn’t start playing volleyball until her junior season of high school, but she was helpful to the Mustangs as a middle hitter and opposite hitter.

She had 77 kills as a senior.

“I had friends from other sports playing volleyball, so I went out,” Collins said. “I enjoyed it. The team aspect is really strong in volleyball. You can make a great individual play in basketball or softball, but in volleyball it usually is going to take three people working together to score.”

While she wasn’t in the headlines all that often, Collins had the distinction of playing on three 20-win teams her senior year. East was 21-10 in volleyball, 21-7 in basketball and 23-4 in softball. All those teams went to the state playoffs. Softball made the fourth round in 2024 and the third round in 2025.

Collins had an older brother (Jaden) graduate from N.C. State with an engineering degree, following in his father’s footsteps.

Kady was an honors student at East and has been focused on Pfeiffer’s psychology program for a while.

“I’m especially interested in grief counseling for children,” Collins said. “I know how much a counselor helped me when my father died. I’d like to be there for kids who have to deal with something like that.”

Pfeiffer is only about 10 minutes from Collins’ house, so she can commute to school. She’s landed a lot of academic scholarships, including the Ed Dupree Memorial Scholarship.

She had thought about trying to play a sport for the Falcons, but she hadn’t made any sort of decision until recently.

“I was over at Pfeiffer, getting my classes, and I ran into some people I knew from East Rowan,” Collins said. “They wanted to know which sport I was going to play in college. I told them I hadn’t really decided on anything. They said. ‘We’re going to go tell the coaches you’re at Pfeiffer.'”

Her friends returned with Pfeiffer volleyball coach Heather Schoch. Shoch coached at Cox Mill before coming to Pfeiffer, so she’s familiar with East’s volleyball program.

“We must have talked for about an hour,” Collins said cheerfully. “I’m excited about trying out for the team.”