Middle Tennesee State University Athletics
#TitleIX50: Blue Raider Volleyball’s Beverly Keel
11/27/2022 4:21:00 AM | Women's Volleyball, BRAA
I know it's cliché, especially in my world, to sit and write a story about what it is that we're thankful for around Thanksgiving. However, in certain circumstances, I think it's almost needed. In fact, it can even be therapeutic.
I've never really thought about it, but this year in the 50th anniversary of Title IX, I took some time to reflect on my brief stint as a volleyball player in the 1980's here at MTSU. All these years later, I'm still at MTSU believe it or not, but I've had quite a few stops along the way.
Honestly, I can sit here today and say that the reason that I'm here and that my career went in the direction it did was because of volleyball. I'm thankful for everything volleyball, and sports in general, did for me growing up because at a time when I reached what was one of the first major crossroads in life, I think volleyball is what ended up saving me.
To everyone that knows me now, I think they'd be surprised to know that I was a tomboy growing up. I wore Levi's, boy shorts and flannel shirts and played ball with the boys in our neighborhood. Once I had the opportunity to sign up for both softball and basketball when I was in fifth grade, I did. I was always kicking or throwing a ball around. It's just what I did growing up in Donelson.
All the way through high school, I played volleyball, softball and basketball. I was the best at volleyball, of course, thanks in large part to a coach I had at Two Rivers Junior High named Jim Breese. He gave me the foundation I needed to go all the way to college as a player. I was average at both softball and basketball, but I really enjoyed it.
Out of the three of them, though, volleyball is what really saved my life.
Without Title IX and being able to continue my volleyball career into college, I really can't begin to fathom how things would've ended up for me.
When I was in high school, my dad, Pinckney Keel, the editorial page editor for the Nashville Banner, unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at age 54 in the newspaper parking lot one night.
I felt a sense of shock and deeply longed for a sense of belonging. Looking back, volleyball fulfilled that for me. It never filled the void left behind by my dad, of course, but it gave me others to lean on and taught me how to work together as part of a team and showed me how to fight through adverse situations, including one the stringent one I was in at the time losing dad.
I could've really gone off the deep end, but because I had volleyball I eventually began to put some of the pieces back together from the shattered person that I was.
When I came to MTSU, our Coach Diane Turnham (at the time we called her Coach "C" because her last name was Cummings) helped me really find my way as I began to figure out who I was going to be in my adult life.
Coach "C," was really a one-woman show and I can truly say I got to learn from the best. She had to drive the van to away matches, she had to haul the bags with all the balls in and out of the gym among other things. Stuff definitely wasn't like what it is now. We used to duct tape the headliner back to the top of the van when we were on the road because it would fall down when we would go over bumps. Not only was she our coach, but she was our mom away from our mom's being away from home for the first time in our lives as players. She advocated for me when I came into the gym that first afternoon to try out and helped show me how to fit in as part of the diverse team that we had.
She was always the ultimate professional and she loved us all and held us to the highest standards, both on the court and in the classroom, which is where I found the ultimate sense of belonging and realized my passion.
When my father passed, he had no idea that I actually wanted to follow in his steps as a journalist. Because of the opportunity I had to play volleyball at MTSU, I was able to start with the student newspaper Sidelines and eventually became the sports editor.
I remember one fall that we ran a story in Sidelines on the front page over football because the volleyball team had beaten Tennessee Tech. Joe Biddle, who was a sports writer at the Banner, stopped by football practice to interview our football coach and athletic director Boots Donnelly and something that Coach Donnelly said that still makes me smile to this day was "Well, Joe, I've had a pretty rough week because we fell off the front page of the student paper to the volleyball team." I know he meant it light-heartedly, of course, but from that moment on it started to really stoke the fire in my belly that I knew this was what I really wanted to do.
I had the opportunity as a student to also intern for Channel 5 in Nashville on the weekends for the late Mark Howard. One particular assignment that I really loved was when I was sent to Shelbyville High when the girls won the national championship and Rick Insell was the coach. I got to do a live interview with coach and that was just a big deal for me because at the time I wanted to go into sports-broadcast journalism in particular.
I only ended up playing two seasons of volleyball at MTSU because I just fell in love with journalism and wanted to focus on my career. I worked really hard during college and through the hard work that being a college athlete and sports in general entailed, it instilled the drive and work ethic in me to be the best at what I did. In volleyball your 100th serve is going to be better than your 10th serve, and in journalism your 100th story is going to be better than your 10th story.
After I finished graduate school at Columbia University, I eventually pivoted over to covering the recording industry and music row in Nashville.
I was at the Nashville Banner at the time and they had an opening in the business department and I covered transportation, but it was during the early 90's when country music was really starting to heat up. I had the chance to cover the likes of Garth Brooks, George Strait, Kenny Rogers, you name it while also coming back to MTSU and teaching in the recording industry department starting in 1995.
Those days working both at the Banner and even on projects on the media relations side for artists like Lionel Ritchie, Shania Twain and Vince Gill were some of the best times of my life and I know that I would never have experienced that without my foundation that helped me build toward that in sports.
There's no question that sports and Title IX helped shape who I am today, and I'm extremely thankful for all the opportunities I've had in life through the foundation that volleyball and my time as a student journalist provided while I went to MTSU, but I will say that I think we do have a long way to go with women's sports even though we have come a long way since my time as a player.
I'm sure everyone remembers a few years ago seeing the facilities that the girls had compared to the men during the NCAA women's basketball tournament. Things like that can't continue to happen in today's world. Today's female athletes are the inspiration for the next generation of both female athletes and professionals, and we need to do all we can as a society to continue to give them the tools and confidence to continue being that inspiration to our young girls growing up.
With all that said, we used to go into the men's training rooms to get wrapped before matches at home and you could tell that the trainers hated it. The locker rooms were just so bad in the Alumni Memorial Gym at the time that we didn't even use them. We used to eat cheeseburgers from Wendy's after matches. We used to get excited just to have a pair of volleyball shoes to wear during matches. I'm glad to say that those days are a pretty far cry from what female athletes go through today.
As the Dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at MTSU, today, the fact that our students go above and beyond in our department's coverage of women's sports both here on the MTSU campus and at the local level with some of our area high school's is a huge stepping stone from the coverage women's sports had when I was playing.
Not only with sports, but the light that our students shine on women and the impact that they have on our world today means a lot to me, personally, as someone who has always advocated for women's equality in both the music and media worlds.
So, as I think back this Thanksgiving, I'm proud to have been part of a number of women over the past 50 years that can honestly say that I benefited from a life growing up in sports.
Without Title IX and having the opportunity to eventually become even a partial-scholarship athlete at MTSU and making the connections I did in the media world, I'm not sure that I would've had the opportunity to follow in my dad's footsteps.
Even now, almost 40 years later, I have a lot of people to thank related to MTSU and the volleyball program, including my teammates, professors and Coach "C," for embracing the girl with the big hair that gave off the punk rock vibes that weren't quite just yet the "in," look at the time. Blue Raider volleyball saved my life. All of my mentors as a young professional saved my life.
If it weren't for all of you, I don't know if I would've ever been able to realize my dreams of following in my dad's footsteps, and that's a story out of the thousands that I've ever written that I'm more thankful to have told than you'll ever know.
I've never really thought about it, but this year in the 50th anniversary of Title IX, I took some time to reflect on my brief stint as a volleyball player in the 1980's here at MTSU. All these years later, I'm still at MTSU believe it or not, but I've had quite a few stops along the way.
Honestly, I can sit here today and say that the reason that I'm here and that my career went in the direction it did was because of volleyball. I'm thankful for everything volleyball, and sports in general, did for me growing up because at a time when I reached what was one of the first major crossroads in life, I think volleyball is what ended up saving me.
To everyone that knows me now, I think they'd be surprised to know that I was a tomboy growing up. I wore Levi's, boy shorts and flannel shirts and played ball with the boys in our neighborhood. Once I had the opportunity to sign up for both softball and basketball when I was in fifth grade, I did. I was always kicking or throwing a ball around. It's just what I did growing up in Donelson.
All the way through high school, I played volleyball, softball and basketball. I was the best at volleyball, of course, thanks in large part to a coach I had at Two Rivers Junior High named Jim Breese. He gave me the foundation I needed to go all the way to college as a player. I was average at both softball and basketball, but I really enjoyed it.
Out of the three of them, though, volleyball is what really saved my life.
Without Title IX and being able to continue my volleyball career into college, I really can't begin to fathom how things would've ended up for me.
When I was in high school, my dad, Pinckney Keel, the editorial page editor for the Nashville Banner, unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack at age 54 in the newspaper parking lot one night.
I felt a sense of shock and deeply longed for a sense of belonging. Looking back, volleyball fulfilled that for me. It never filled the void left behind by my dad, of course, but it gave me others to lean on and taught me how to work together as part of a team and showed me how to fight through adverse situations, including one the stringent one I was in at the time losing dad.
I could've really gone off the deep end, but because I had volleyball I eventually began to put some of the pieces back together from the shattered person that I was.
When I came to MTSU, our Coach Diane Turnham (at the time we called her Coach "C" because her last name was Cummings) helped me really find my way as I began to figure out who I was going to be in my adult life.
Coach "C," was really a one-woman show and I can truly say I got to learn from the best. She had to drive the van to away matches, she had to haul the bags with all the balls in and out of the gym among other things. Stuff definitely wasn't like what it is now. We used to duct tape the headliner back to the top of the van when we were on the road because it would fall down when we would go over bumps. Not only was she our coach, but she was our mom away from our mom's being away from home for the first time in our lives as players. She advocated for me when I came into the gym that first afternoon to try out and helped show me how to fit in as part of the diverse team that we had.
She was always the ultimate professional and she loved us all and held us to the highest standards, both on the court and in the classroom, which is where I found the ultimate sense of belonging and realized my passion.
When my father passed, he had no idea that I actually wanted to follow in his steps as a journalist. Because of the opportunity I had to play volleyball at MTSU, I was able to start with the student newspaper Sidelines and eventually became the sports editor.
I remember one fall that we ran a story in Sidelines on the front page over football because the volleyball team had beaten Tennessee Tech. Joe Biddle, who was a sports writer at the Banner, stopped by football practice to interview our football coach and athletic director Boots Donnelly and something that Coach Donnelly said that still makes me smile to this day was "Well, Joe, I've had a pretty rough week because we fell off the front page of the student paper to the volleyball team." I know he meant it light-heartedly, of course, but from that moment on it started to really stoke the fire in my belly that I knew this was what I really wanted to do.
I had the opportunity as a student to also intern for Channel 5 in Nashville on the weekends for the late Mark Howard. One particular assignment that I really loved was when I was sent to Shelbyville High when the girls won the national championship and Rick Insell was the coach. I got to do a live interview with coach and that was just a big deal for me because at the time I wanted to go into sports-broadcast journalism in particular.
I only ended up playing two seasons of volleyball at MTSU because I just fell in love with journalism and wanted to focus on my career. I worked really hard during college and through the hard work that being a college athlete and sports in general entailed, it instilled the drive and work ethic in me to be the best at what I did. In volleyball your 100th serve is going to be better than your 10th serve, and in journalism your 100th story is going to be better than your 10th story.
After I finished graduate school at Columbia University, I eventually pivoted over to covering the recording industry and music row in Nashville.
I was at the Nashville Banner at the time and they had an opening in the business department and I covered transportation, but it was during the early 90's when country music was really starting to heat up. I had the chance to cover the likes of Garth Brooks, George Strait, Kenny Rogers, you name it while also coming back to MTSU and teaching in the recording industry department starting in 1995.
Those days working both at the Banner and even on projects on the media relations side for artists like Lionel Ritchie, Shania Twain and Vince Gill were some of the best times of my life and I know that I would never have experienced that without my foundation that helped me build toward that in sports.
There's no question that sports and Title IX helped shape who I am today, and I'm extremely thankful for all the opportunities I've had in life through the foundation that volleyball and my time as a student journalist provided while I went to MTSU, but I will say that I think we do have a long way to go with women's sports even though we have come a long way since my time as a player.
I'm sure everyone remembers a few years ago seeing the facilities that the girls had compared to the men during the NCAA women's basketball tournament. Things like that can't continue to happen in today's world. Today's female athletes are the inspiration for the next generation of both female athletes and professionals, and we need to do all we can as a society to continue to give them the tools and confidence to continue being that inspiration to our young girls growing up.
With all that said, we used to go into the men's training rooms to get wrapped before matches at home and you could tell that the trainers hated it. The locker rooms were just so bad in the Alumni Memorial Gym at the time that we didn't even use them. We used to eat cheeseburgers from Wendy's after matches. We used to get excited just to have a pair of volleyball shoes to wear during matches. I'm glad to say that those days are a pretty far cry from what female athletes go through today.
As the Dean of the College of Media and Entertainment at MTSU, today, the fact that our students go above and beyond in our department's coverage of women's sports both here on the MTSU campus and at the local level with some of our area high school's is a huge stepping stone from the coverage women's sports had when I was playing.
Not only with sports, but the light that our students shine on women and the impact that they have on our world today means a lot to me, personally, as someone who has always advocated for women's equality in both the music and media worlds.
So, as I think back this Thanksgiving, I'm proud to have been part of a number of women over the past 50 years that can honestly say that I benefited from a life growing up in sports.
Without Title IX and having the opportunity to eventually become even a partial-scholarship athlete at MTSU and making the connections I did in the media world, I'm not sure that I would've had the opportunity to follow in my dad's footsteps.
Even now, almost 40 years later, I have a lot of people to thank related to MTSU and the volleyball program, including my teammates, professors and Coach "C," for embracing the girl with the big hair that gave off the punk rock vibes that weren't quite just yet the "in," look at the time. Blue Raider volleyball saved my life. All of my mentors as a young professional saved my life.
If it weren't for all of you, I don't know if I would've ever been able to realize my dreams of following in my dad's footsteps, and that's a story out of the thousands that I've ever written that I'm more thankful to have told than you'll ever know.
Derek Mason LIVE: Presented by The Boulevard Bar & Grille Week 3
Wednesday, September 10
MTSU Volleyball Recap 9/5/25-9/7/25
Tuesday, September 09
MTSU Tennis Pro-Am 9/6/25
Tuesday, September 09
Blue Raider Notebook Presented by TOA - September 8th
Tuesday, September 09
