Haley MacDonald is no stranger to success on the volleyball court.

While attending Henry M. Jackson High School in Everett, Wash., both MacDonald and fellow Cougar freshman Emmy Allen were a part of four state tournament teams.

The duo grabbed a 4A State Championship their sophomore year in 2010. They also had an eighth-place finish in 2009, a fourth-place finish in 2011 and a third-place finish in 2012.

But volleyball wasn’t the first sport MacDonald was involved in. Instead, she started off with taekwondo and basketball.

“I just went randomly to a camp, a volleyball camp, with some friends,” she said. “I just never stopped; kept going from there. I stopped everything else and went on from there.”

MacDonald chose to play setter, a position that requires leadership and mental focus, and was quickly drawn into the sport and the teamwork it requires to be successful.

At 11, her father asked her to pick one sport of the three she was involved in and focus on that sport.

“He said, ‘I’m going to push you the hardest to be the best at that one sport, so pick wisely,’” she said. “So I said volleyball and never stopped. I don’t know what it was, I was just automatically drawn to (volleyball) after that camp.”

From then on MacDonald was focused on volleyball. At times she was uncertain if she could continue, although she always knew she wanted to play as long as possible.

Her freshman year of high school she said there were doubts about where she was at, but the doubts didn’t last too long.

“Sophomore [year] when we won State, that was kind of like everything; I was like, ‘Wow, I can do this,’” she said. “That’s when the letters started coming in and I started talking to some coaches, so then I knew I was on the right track.”

After winning state she began talking with WSU, actually making her first call to WSU Assistant Coach Burdette Greeny.

The two connected. However, being raised on the West Side, she says she never wanted to go to WSU. In fact she saw her visit to Pullman as a waste of time until she actually arrived on campus.

“We were out in the middle of the wheat fields and I was like, ‘Where am I, what are we doing?’” she said. “But then I got (to WSU) and I wanted to commit. At the end of my visit I knew I wanted to commit.”

So growing up a fan of UW, what did she do with all of the Washington shirts she admittedly had in her closet?

“I burned it, threw it away, ripped it,” she said.

MacDonald and the WSU volleyball team take on Arizona State tonight at 6 p.m. and Arizona on Sunday at 1 p.m.