A smile and passion can be seen on Brook Blutreich’s face as the Desert Vista Thunder get ready to start their volleyball match.

She and the rest of the team have special handshakes before the ball goes up in the air. Blutreich, junior outside hitter and captain, knows exactly how to hype the team up.

“I just love how happy she always is. She’s always really encouraging and it really helps me to encourage others,” teammate Jennifer Soto says. “We just encourage each other and it’s really helpful.”

Blutreich’s parents, Brian and Lynda, are former Olympians.

“I want to follow in their footsteps, definitely,” Blutreich says.

She is on her way, playing three sports - indoor volleyball, sand volleyball and track and field. This year she's going to try javelin, a sport her mother competed in.

Blutreich and her sister Logan play on the same team at DV. Brooke is hard on her little sister.

“I want her to be better. I want her to be better than me, because she’s a freshman on varsity, so she can be really good,” she says.

Last season she was the MVP of the volleyball team. “Brooke is a solid player,” says coach Molly West. “She’s a big leader and it’s fun to watch her.”

Blutreich's competitiveness inspires Soto the most. “In games she’s just all out in every single game no matter what,” she says.

Blutreich and Soto are tight. They had a movie night recently, made cookies and hung out with some of the freshmen on the team.

“Last year we sat at the same lunch table and every single day we [several girls] would just have a solid 10-minute laughing session for no reason or over the dumbest reason,” says Soto. “Non-stop laughing, my back would start hurting and we would laugh more because of that, it was just great.”

Blutreich draws inspiration from April Ross and Sarah Sponcil. Ross is an American beach volleyball Olympian. She won a silver in the 2012 Summer Games and a bronze in the 2016 Summer Games. Sponcil, from Phoenix, is a senior volleyball player at UCLA, Blutreich’s dream school.