First to the Future

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For a volleyball program playing its first season in nearly half a century, Jackie Moore and Isabella Bareford represent something of a riddle. How did two of Vanderbilt’s most important figures play their first collegiate match together 236 days before the Commodores announced they were reintroducing the sport?

As Team 1 nears the end of its maiden voyage, Moore and Bareford are closing out their fifth year as teammates. Each earned athletic and academic all-conference honors at Loyola Marymount, then reunited at Vanderbilt after a brief interregnum—Moore as a senior political science major and Bareford as a medicine, health and society graduate student.

Their on-court chemistry has helped the Commodores lay a competitive foundation in the unforgiving SEC. Bareford ranks seventh in the conference in assists, while Moore is first on the team in blocks and hitting percentage. Yet their influence extends beyond stats, beyond a riddle and beyond this week’s Senior Day— one last first in a season full of them.

Head coach Anders Nelson sought student-athletes who dared to be first instead of next, women who would create the template for those who follow. On that count, Moore and Bareford aren’t done. Not nearly done. They helped teach a young team to communicate and challenge and support each other. And by utilizing their time at Vanderbilt, however brief, to further long-held goals, Moore to attend law school and Bareford a physician assistant program, they will keep showing the way forward. They will be first to the future.

Bareford ranks seventh in the SEC in assists per set (Arnold Cadayona/Vanderbilt Athletics).

“They’re super ambitious,” Nelson said. “They’re not willing to accept ‘no’ on things that matter, and they dream really big. I hope that’s their greatest legacy, that our players see two people who used their time in this program to get closer to what they want to achieve. There’s nothing selfish about that. They gave everything they could to this program, so that they could get what they wanted out of the opportunities available in this program.

“I tell them all the time ‘When you guys come back, I want you to be so proud of this place. But I also want this place to be so proud of you.’ I have no doubt that’s going to happen.”

Two of a Kind

Volleyball moves quickly. While any given point offers as many permutations as a chess board, players have fractions of seconds to decide moves. Still, the brain being a marvelous thing, an entire inner monologue can play out in that blink of an eye.

In a recent match, even as her muscles worked in concert to lift her off the ground and meet the ball in midair, Moore’s mind whirred as she saw two blockers rising to meet her. How should she react? Where should she hit the ball? She mentally scrolled through her options. Then she sensed the ball drifting toward her hitting shoulder, slightly away from where she might have expected it on that particular play but perfectly positioned for her to hit around the block. Bareford, she realized, had literally set her up for success.

“I remembered thinking in that moment, ‘Dang, that was kind of perfect. That worked out really well for me there,’” Moore recalled. “I don’t really know how to describe it. A lot of it is I trust she’ll get me the ball where I need it to be. And she trusts that I’ll be there when she sets me. There’s a lot of trust in the relationship.”

Trust like that takes time, the kind of time that has taken a toll on the bright, fuzzy pink socks that Bareford gave Moore as a Christmas gift when the latter was a freshman. But Moore still has them, many years and several time zones removed from Los Angeles. They are early proof of a friendship that has proved more durable.

Bareford was one year ahead of Moore at LMU, but they bonded over academics and library study marathons—occasionally even procuring all three meals in a day from the building’s basement coffeeshop. They have different personalities and volleyball journeys. Bareford was a setter and a top-150 recruit, Moore a middle and a diamond in the rough who flew under recruiting radars. But the shared instincts that brought them together in the library forged their chemistry on the court.

“She really loves to be challenged and wants to get better and be the best that she can,” Bareford said of her friend. “I’m the same way, so I think we gravitated towards each other because that’s something that that we saw in each other.”

And while they didn’t plan on ending up at the same school for a second time, gravity is a stubborn thing. Bareford knew even before her senior season that she wanted to go somewhere else to use her additional COVID-era eligibility as a graduate student. She wanted to compete at an elite level, advance her academic interests by pursuing a master’s degree in the public health realm and try living in a different environment than her native Southern California. In other words, she wanted to go to Vanderbilt. There just hadn’t been a volleyball program there the first time she was choosing colleges.

“That was maybe the first time I had heard that,” Nelson recalled, “Just her image of Vanderbilt and her excitement for what we were doing, really before I’d even spoken to her, was very cool and something I’ll remember for a long time.”

She made up her mind within days of entering the portal following the 2023 season. She then arrived in Nashville ahead of the 2024-25 academic year—part of the first group to arrive on campus as the Commodores began a year of practices and scrimmages.

“It has completely surpassed everything that I could have envisioned,” Bareford said. “It has been just the best experience. I’ve loved it here.”

Moore, Bareford and Hailee Mack are the only Commodores to play every set this season (Sam Jordan/Vanderbilt Athletics). 

The words carry the stamp of sincerity because it’s much the same message she conveyed to Moore when her friend and former teammate, who remained at LMU for the 2024 season, eventually entered the portal. Feeling out of place after a coaching change in Los Angeles, Moore was torn between looking for a better fit for her final season and worries about uprooting her academic life with law school fast approaching on the horizon.

She remembers going out to eat with Bareford, still one of their favorite pastimes, and trying to make sense of everything swirling around in her head. Bareford listened and offered a suggestion. Why not Vanderbilt?

“She was telling me how it would be great for my desire to go to law school, and how they’ve been so good with her wanting to go into PA school and helping her with internships and things of that nature,” Moore said. “It was a lot of me being very indecisive about what I should do and her trying to give me good perspective. And then telling me about Vanderbilt and how she thinks that would be a good opportunity for me, which it has been. So, you know, she was right again.”

Building Vanderbilt’s Future

During a practice exercise this season, Vanderbilt players had to explain the communication style that they found most helpful when receiving a message. When it was Moore’s turn, she hesitated. She wasn’t sure. But she knew who would know the answer, so she asked Bareford. Moore is at her best, Bareford offered up, when she has a few key points to focus on. Give her the bullet points and let her get to work.

Call it a setter’s leadership style, helping put people around you in position to succeed.

“She’s very good at meeting the person where they’re at,” Moore said. “I see it with our freshmen, meeting them where they are and then slowly building up more and more confidence to more complex things. I think that’s also what makes her a super good leader because she’s able to help you grow in a way that’s very effective.”

Nelson took great pains to make sure Bareford knew what she was signing up for with a roster that would be largely comprised of first- and second-year student-athletes. It hasn’t always been easy for her. Graduate students living in a Midtown apartment have different lives and different interests and priorities than freshmen living in dorms. But the Commodores didn’t just need Bareford’s sets. Nor were those the only skills that attracted the coaches. They needed a communicator. They needed her leadership. As the program’s first official matches approached, including the spectacular opener on Wyatt Lawn, Nelson pulled her aside amid the grind of preseason two-a-days.

“She’s got her life figured out in so many ways that it was just a reminder that we need everything she’s got to give to the program for these last few months,” Nelson said. “And, man, did she understand and respond. She’s just somebody who intuitively understands that the more I give, the more I’m going to get from Vanderbilt volleyball.”

Sometimes it helps to have a friend to ease the burden. In addition to fellow grad student Sydney Conley, who arrived at the same time as Bareford, Moore emerged as an influential figure and captain. Again, that hasn’t been without its challenges. During a summer exhibition match in Japan, for instance, she tried to be assertive after a ball went between teammates, only to discover she incorrectly assigned responsibility to freshman Hailee Mack. She felt terrible, but Mack brushed the subsequent apology aside and told her she loved knowing Moore cared enough to take the lead. Lesson learned.

So talented that she drew interest from schools with Final Four pedigrees when she entered the portal, Moore told Nelson she wanted to be around a young team. A late bloomer, she felt like she was always playing catch up and wanted a chance to be a leader.

“People say things in the recruiting process,” Nelson said. “Do they follow through on it? Not always. But she has followed through on so much and she has kept it at the forefront of her mind through every day she’s been here.”

Moore’s grown more comfortable in the months since. Once rarely the first to speak when Nelson asks for input in team settings, hers is now routinely the first voice heard. Amid the frustration of setbacks that turn on a handful of mistakes or momentary loss of focus, she’s forced herself to try and find the right words when nobody quite knows what to say.

“When Jackie’s talking, they see it as an opportunity to learn because she’s been through so much and was in their shoes when she was a freshman,” Bareford said. “Jackie’s worked a ton on her leadership. It’s not something that she really felt like she ever had as much space to do at LMU, so it’s really cool to kind of see her step into that role and grow so much and mature so much in that way. People look to her—I look to her. She’s obviously uber talented, but she’s a great human. You want to listen to great humans.”

First to the future, from left to right: Mia Soerensen, Jackie Moore, Isabella Bareford, Sydney Conley (Sam Jordan/Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Building Their Own Future

All of this might seem like a lot of blood, sweat and tears to invest for the reward of 24 volleyball matches, even if the effort did come with a bonus trip to Japan this past summer. About the time she plays her final match for Vanderbilt, Bareford will turn in the capstone project that marks the culmination of her 18-month master’s program. She was recently accepted to one of the physician assistant programs at the top of her wish list. After an internship with Nashville’s Jean Crowe Advocacy Center, Moore still has her sights set on law school and making a difference in the community.

In setting up their teammates for future success, they helped themselves in the bargain.

 “Even if you’re not the top leader of an organization, those leadership skills enable you to progress to that status ultimately,” Moore said of the value of her growth. “Because leaders aren’t just plopped into those roles. They have to work to that role, just like I had to learn to become better at volleyball and more mature so I could be put in this position of being a leader. I’ve taken a little bit of a page out of Isa’s book with how to communicate with different people, especially in tough situations, when to speak up and just how to be a good role model and show up with your effort.”

There is a large anchor in Vanderbilt’s locker room. As each student-athlete exhausts her eligibility, she will clip a link to the anchor—the literal links in what Nelson envisions as an unbroken chain that may one day lead to SEC and NCAA championships. Along with graduate students and fellow captains Conley and Mia Soerensen, Bareford and Moore will be among the first links in the chain. And the first to take the lessons learned into the rest of their lives.

The first season is nearing an end. But for two friends, this is just the beginning.

“It’s awesome how it’s so full circle,” Bareford said. “She’s going to achieve her dreams because of her decision to come here, and I’m achieving my dreams as well. Our coaching staff is huge on setting you up for future success. So it’s really cool that we’re going to be the first people out of the program and we’re already achieving our dreams.”