In February, just as the 6A boys volleyball season was about to tip off, a reporter visited Sandra Day O’Connor High School to set up an on-camera interview with Troy Dueling. The reporter suggested the state championship trophy case in the lobby of the Eagles’ gymnasium as a potential backdrop.

Dueling, O’Connor’s boys volleyball coach, shook his head.

“None of those trophies are ours,” he explained, referring to his program.

After coming excruciatingly close as 6A runners-up in 2018 and 2021, O’Connor aims to finally get over the hump in 2022. So far, so good – roughly a month into the season, the Eagles are a perfect 9-0 in AIA play and sit alone in first place of AZPreps365’s 6A rankings after handily defeating No. 2-ranked Highland 3-1 on the road March 31. Front and center in that pivotal match, just as he is to a talented team’s state title hopes, was senior outside hitter Zach Rama.

Rama, who is listed on O’Connor’s roster at 6-feet-7 inches tall, stands as one of the best high school boys’ volleyball players in the state – if not the entire country. He currently averages over five kills per set at a whopping .420 attack percentage, metrics that help explain why several top Division I volleyball programs pursued him even after a pandemic-shortened sophomore season and before he committed to powerhouse UCLA in July 2020.

Spectators watching his slender frame glide around the court as he recorded a match-high 24 kills against Highland might be forgiven if they assumed he had been playing volleyball all his life. But they would be wrong.

Rama grew up around volleyball – his mother Shoni played beach volleyball in the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) – but gravitated much more towards basketball, his father’s favorite sport, as a child.

“I was very invested [in basketball],” Rama recalled recently. “I'd say I was just as invested as I am right now for volleyball. It was what I wanted to do throughout.”

Finally, Shoni Rama convinced her son to give competitive volleyball a shot in the summer before his freshman year at O’Connor. Though volleyball started growing on Zach, he never envisioned himself as the best player on the best high school team in the entire state.

“I didn't think that I was very good,” Zach Rama said. “That summer, my mom was telling me that I had potential and she saw some things. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I was just still focused on basketball.”

Still, Rama started playing for Dueling’s Arizona Fear club team even as he continued to pursue basketball and played on the junior varsity hoops team as a freshman at O’Connor. But as basketball season wound down, he rejoined Dueling on O’Connor’s varsity volleyball team. Before long, Rama was starting to make good on the potential that his mother had seen. A growth spurt helped, but Dueling saw more than just a height advantage with the then-freshman.

“I always thought he was going to be a good volleyball player,” Dueling said. “But towards the end of his freshman year, he really kind of grew and really started to operate at a different level.”

Dueling also believes that Rama’s off-court personality is as big a factor in his rapid volleyball success as his on-court prowess.

“He's physically very gifted, and he's very athletic and coordinated,” Dueling said. “But I think what really does set him apart is how humble he is and how he's a great teammate. He's never taken reps off. He's never not working at his highest potential.”

Even while he reaffirmed his commitment to volleyball over the past year, Rama still missed running up and down the basketball court. So he approached Dueling and O’Connor athletic director Justin McLain after his club season ended last fall with a proposal – could he join the Eagles’ basketball team midseason for one last shot at hoops?

“I just didn't want to look back on it like throughout college and realize I wish I could have played [basketball] a little bit more,” Rama said.

After being reassured that volleyball was still his star’s top priority, Dueling gave his blessing, and McLain helped get the eligibility paperwork in order. Rama then went to try out in front of O’Connor boys basketball head coach Josh Cole.

Cole was open to adding Rama, but skeptical about how much he would contribute. He had heard plenty about Rama’s athletic ability from the senior’s volleyball friends who were already on the basketball team as well as from Dueling himself, who is a friend and pickup hoops partner of Cole’s.

But Cole was also in the midst of his first season at the helm of O’Connor varsity boys basketball and was hoping to minimize any disruptions. Besides, he thought, how good could the kid really be? Rama’s height and athleticism could easily translate to defense and rebounding, but he had not played basketball competitively in nearly three years. Soon, however, Cole realized that whatever doubts he had were misplaced.

“He was even better than we could imagine,” Cole said.

In a midweek tryout for Cole and the varsity coaching staff, Rama quickly made an impression with how naturally he seemed to shoot the ball. He was soon added to the team and came off the bench for O’Connor’s game against region foe Pinnacle. In one of his first sequences, Rama secured a rebound, took it down to the other end of the court, eurostepped past a defender and jumped towards the rim from the middle of the paint for an easy bucket. Cole was floored.

“OK, he's special,” Cole remembered thinking to himself.

Cole inserted Rama into the starting lineup the very next game. Rama would go on to become one of the team’s best shooters, averaging over 16 points per game. He was voted all-region despite playing in less than half of O’Connor’s season.

Like his friend Dueling, Cole was even more impressed by what he saw from Rama off the court as well.

“He was always really polite and allowed our coaching staff to coach him a lot,” Cole said. “When you get the clout that he's gotten, when you're probably the number one [volleyball] player in the country, he didn't have to listen to our fourth assistant coach, but he's allowing himself to get coached, and that's just the young man that he is.”

Rama has about a month left of high school volleyball – plus what figures to be another run at that elusive state championship with O’Connor – before he continues his career at UCLA. Dueling expects big things from him there.

“I expect him to go in there and work really hard and earn some [playing time] and go out there on the court and earn some more and help that team win a national championship, hopefully,” Dueling said.