When Stanford announced it was dropping the sport of men's volleyball (a decision that was later reversed), Pepperdine was a beneficiary as three-time All-American Jaylen Jasper joined the Waves as a graduate transfer ahead of the 2021-22 school year. He's made an immediate impact and is averaging a team-best 3.99 points per set. He'll have two years to play with the Waves. We talked about his experiences and what keeps him competing at a high level:
 
Q: You have had the opportunity of competing with Team USA. How has the experience helped benefit your all-around athletic career?
 
A: The experiences I have had with USA Volleyball and the youth, junior and collegiate national teams have been amazing for helping me to develop my game. It exposed me to the intensity and speed of international volleyball while getting the opportunity to travel and play in foreign countries. It helped me adjust to the speed of college volleyball when I was a freshman at Stanford. The many coaches I have had helped me figure out who I am as a player and under what conditions and coaching styles I learn and perform my best at. I have also made some great friends being a part of these teams that I still keep in contact with today and often see across the net during our season. 
 
Q: How has your work ethic in the classroom helped your work ethic in your sport as well as vice versa?
 
A: I would say my work ethic in sports helped my work ethic in school more than the reverse. I am not naturally smart, I was able to cruise through middle and high school with good enough grades in order to get me into Stanford but once I got there I quickly learned that I needed to manage my time a lot more wisely and that I needed to put just as much work into my studies as I did my sport. I still have my moments where I procrastinate on an assignment, but it is much less frequent than what I used to. Here at Pepperdine I am putting in equal amounts of work in the gym during practice and in my master's program, and while it is significantly more work than undergrad, I am much better at divvying up my time during the week to get everything done, so that I am not worrying about getting work done when I am practicing or vice versa. 
 
Q: How was the transition from playing at Stanford's program to now being here at Pepperdine?
 
A: The biggest things for me were adjusting to the different style of coaching and fitting in with my new teammates. My coaches here at Pepperdine have made the transition super easy by being very patient with me and maintaining an open dialogue about what I have been taught versus what their expectations are. That way if any major differences arise, we can communicate efficiently and make sure I understand what the rules are. I absolutely love every single guy on our team and I have felt so accepted and welcomed on this team, so they have been a rock for me with all these changes. 
 
Q: What are your hopes for this year's indoor season?
 
A: I think it is really easy to say "win our conference" or "win a national championship" like most people would, and while as a team that might be an accurate reflection of our overall end goal, my personal goal for this season is to have fun and find my passion for the sport again. I really struggled with the mental side of the game at Stanford as well as my first semester here, and there were times I wanted to quit and never touch a volleyball again because I had lost all confidence in my abilities. I did not think I was getting any better, no matter how hard I was practicing or watching film or getting extra reps, but my coaches and teammates came through and gave me the strength and motivation to not give up. Eventually I got a little sliver of my confidence back, which has since then grown exponentially. I am back to looking forward to practice and getting to try out new things and making errors, which was definitely not the case a couple of months ago. No matter how the 2021-22 season goes I hope that by the time it is over I am eagerly looking ahead to the 2022-23 season and excited to continue working to get better.
 
Q: What has been your biggest motivator in athletics and academics?
 
A: My dogs. Hands down. Jackson Avery and Mark Sloan are my almost 2-year-old pointer mixes that I rescued during COVID and everything I do is for them. Right now they are living with my parents in Maryland because they have the time and money to take much better care of them than I could as a student-athlete in grad school. I want to give them the best life imaginable, a nice house with a big yard, all the toys and treats they could imagine, taking them to doggy day care and on road trips across the country, and the best way I can do that is by staying in school and furthering my education to increase my chances of getting a good (and hopefully well-paid) job in the future so I can actually afford to do all of that myself. My dogs are basically like my children and I want to give them the world because they are the goodest, most handsome and loving boys on the planet.
 
Q: What has been your biggest takeaway from being an athlete here at Pepperdine and perhaps as an athlete in general?
 
A: How important mental health is. Even outside of sports. Your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and behaviors all play a role in your overall well-being. If you neglect taking care of yourself and your mind you will feel it in every other aspect of your life. Some more than others, and I am someone who if I am not taking care of myself mentally, it is obvious as it bleeds into every single thing I do. Learning how to deal with stress, anxiety, anger, disappointment, all these negative emotions that come with playing a sport have made it so easy to deal with them outside of my sport because I can identify potentially triggering events faster, prepare for them sooner, and overcome them with skills I use every day when I step on the court so any emotional impact is minimized. 
 
Q: What would be one piece of advice you would give to other athletes that want to play indoor at a high level?
 
A: The more reps you can get, the better. Obviously you need to be make sure you are taking care of your body and giving yourself time to recover, but the more reps you can get, the better position you put yourself in to have success. With a coach would be great, yeah, but even by yourself is huge. Practicing serving, passing/setting against a wall to work on technique, finding a partner and doing some two-man drills, all the extra touches you can get outside of practice will make all the difference. 
 
Q: Lastly, what were the biggest effects that COVID had on your college experience and athletic career?
 
A: My junior year and volleyball season were cut in half by the start of the pandemic so I got a little more than half of a normal college experience in that sense. Then during quarantine, Stanford announced it would cut a third of the teams in its athletic department -- 11 out of 33 -- on the grounds of "preexisting budget deficits exacerbated by COVID" which was the main reason I sat out my senior season at Stanford and took a year off from volleyball. Getting back into volleyball after a devastating end to my undergrad experience and taking so much time off was by far one of the most physically and mentally challenging things I have had to do in my career, but from it I learned so much about myself and what it takes to be great at something. It sucked going through all of it but it made me a much stronger person in the end.