Zoë Taylor’s award-winning beach volleyball career didn’t start with a grand plan. It began with her mom, Katina Taylor, who wouldn’t stop signing her daughter up for activities. Nearly a decade later, it has led her to establish Dig Deeper, South Florida’s first nonprofit beach volleyball and life skills camp for underserved youth.
“She forced me into it,” Zoë Taylor, 20, says with a laugh, recalling how her mother cycled her through dance, basketball, soccer — practically every sport imaginable — before volleyball finally stuck. By eighth grade, Zoë found her game. But when COVID arrived, and gyms closed, Taylor took her passion to the sand.
“I got the opportunity to play on the beach, and I decided that I wanted to pursue this for my collegiate career,” says Taylor.
That pivot, born of a pandemic and a stretch of South Florida shoreline, led Zoë to back-to-back Miami Herald Beach Volleyball Player of the Year honors, a commitment to LSU, a transfer to Arizona State, and a sophomore season competing at the Division I level. For the daughter of Pro Football Hall of Famer Jason Taylor, who spent 15 years in the NFL, elite competition is the family language.
But winning on the court was just the start. During Taylor’s senior year at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, as she watched her mother pour herself into the family’s youth sports nonprofit, Champions4Character, Taylor was inspired to give back in her own way.
“I think it came to be by seeing my mom and wanting to give kids an opportunity to play the sport I loved,” she says.
That something is Dig Deeper, which is now heading into its third year.
On June 4, 65 girls from the Boys & Girls Club will spend the day on the sand with Taylor and ten NCAA beach volleyball athletes she’s recruited from programs across the country.
The sport is the entry point. The mission, however, goes further. “We teach them life skills — how to be confident, how to make new friends, how to learn new skills — and just give them a positive space to get active and exercise.”
For girls who may never have touched a volleyball, a single day on that beach can reframe what they believe is possible for themselves. And for Taylor, the camp’s growth has been the most meaningful part. “It just keeps being more special each time,” she says.
Girls from the first two years keep coming back, some now in their early twenties. “They just want to keep learning,” Taylor says. “They’re all open to getting better.”
Beyond South Florida, Taylor aspires to launch Dig Deeper in Arizona and beyond.
“I live there basically half of the year,” she says of Tempe, “so I want to give back to my community there.” “I want to bring it around the U.S.,” she says. “Giving all these deserving kids the chance to learn the sport of beach volleyball and see if it sparks something great for them is driving me to reach farther.”
