As her senior season carries on, setter Torri Henry continues to improve. The fourth-year player from Belton, Mo. is leading the Stony Brook women’s volleyball team’s offense like a maestro, and climbing higher on the program’s all-time record book by the day.

Henry has always been a reliable facilitator for the Seawolves, but she is currently on another level. She currently leads the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) in assists per set with 10.87 and total assists with 674. She is currently on pace to shatter her career high in almost every single statistical category on both sides of the ball. Also, her nine double-doubles lead the team. Henry’s domination on the floor has the team riding a four-game winning streak, making it the hottest team in the CAA at the moment.

Already the program’s sixth all-time leader in career assists, Henry will almost certainly move into the top five and reach the 3,000 mark by the end of this year. However, she was destined to have a potential hall-of-fame career with Stony Brook long before she arrived on campus.

As an only child in Missouri near Kansas City, Henry grew up around sports. Her family loves the Kansas City Chiefs and the Kansas City Royals, and they took her to many games as a kid.

These highly-competitive environments helped shape her mindset at a young age. Building connections with teammates and rivalries with opponents became her hobby.

“I love competing with people across the net mentally and not just physically,” Henry said in an interview with The Statesman. “The team aspect and the mental competition made me fall in love with [volleyball].”

Henry did not start out with volleyball. When she was younger, she was primarily a runner, and her parents wanted her to play basketball. She started playing volleyball just for fun at eight years old, but realized quickly that she was much better at it than the other sports.

Once Henry realized that volleyball was her true passion, her parents became her biggest supporters. They were former athletes themselves and had no prior interest in volleyball, but they still signed her up to play for Kansas City (KC) Power: one of the most prestigious volleyball clubs in Missouri. Even now, Henry’s mother flies to Long Island every other weekend to watch her play; her father also visits frequently.

Deciding to play volleyball over the sports her parents were interested in was a pivotal moment in Henry’s life, as it was when she established her own independence.

“They didn’t understand volleyball,” Henry said. “They had to learn because I loved it. I think that was me developing my own identity and not following in my parents’ footsteps. My parents wanted me to play basketball. They thought that I was going to do track. I just wanted to play volleyball.”

While playing for KC Power, she also spent all four years of her high school career competing on the St. Teresa’s Academy varsity girls volleyball team. Even with St. Teresa’s Academy, she still was nowhere near where she is now as a player.

While playing varsity high school volleyball, Henry played almost every position except setter, from middle blocker to outside hitter to libero. However, during her recruitment process, head coach Kristin Belzung fancied her as a setter, rather than any of her high school positions.

Henry’s selfless, team-first mentality made the transition a smooth one.

“[Belzung] saw something in me that I am really grateful for,” Henry said. “I love celebrating others, basically, and that’s what I get to do: give the ball to somebody and they get the kill.”

During Henry’s college recruitment process, Stony Brook was the only school who wanted her to set for the offense. Army West Point, the University of Houston, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and Bradley University all competed for her services as well, but all of them saw her as a defensive specialist or libero. After visiting Belzung and her staff at Stony Brook, Henry fell in love with the culture and made her final decision.

Henry’s introduction to college was muddied by the COVID-19 pandemic that isolated her along with a couple of her then-freshman teammates. Her freshman season of 2020 wound up being moved to the spring of 2021, yet she still found instant success.

In her debut season, Henry was the offense’s starting setter and finished second in the America East Conference (AE) with 413 total assists. Her 8.10 assists per set ranked fourth in the AE, while her 17 service aces were the third-most in the conference. Henry’s numbers earned her a selection to the Spring 2021 All-AE Rookie Team.

As a sophomore, Henry’s comfortability at Stony Brook continued to grow, allowing her to rise through the ranks and became the AE’s best setter. She led the conference in assists (951), assists per set (9.91) and service aces (39), yet somehow she did not win any conference awards at the end of the year.

In her junior year, the University had changed athletic conferences and joined the CAA, where Henry continued to be a star. Leading a Seawolves’ offense that was unfamiliar with its new surroundings, Henry flourished and finished the season fourth in the conference in assists (860) and assists per set (8.6).

Throughout Henry’s four years at Stony Brook, her crowning achievement is not her assists title in 2021, nor is it her current ongoing career-best season. Rather, her biggest accomplishment has been her coming out of her shell and learning how to form connections with others.

Justby being outgoing towards people she is unfamiliar with, Henry has learned how to gain her teammates’ and coaches’ trust.

“I know how to build relationships with people … I know how to communicate,” Henry said. “I definitely worked on that since I have been here because that’s not one of my strengths. I think I have stepped out of my comfort zone and I think it’s paid off and still paying off. Gaining my teammates’ trust has really evolved over the course of my four years.”

Henry believes her great ongoing senior season stems from her improved social skills.

“I put in a lot of work in the spring to get out of my comfort zone and make connections with people that I don’t live with and are not always around,” Henry said. “I am not the greatest at being vulnerable and things like that, so trying to communicate to people to gain their trust has helped also.”

When Henry is not setting her teammates up for kills, she is tackling two majors: psychology and political science. She already wrapped up the psychology half of her bachelor’s degree and will finish her political science major at the end of this semester. With one more year of NCAA eligibility due to COVID-19, Henry plans on exercising it to pursue her Master of Business Administration. Afterwards, she plans to attend law school so she can become a sports entertainment lawyer or a sports agent, like her father.