(Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of feature profiles on this year's Hall of Fame inductees and Wall of Honor selections that will be posted every Monday, leading up to the Sept. 21 Hall of Fame Banquet.)
 
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
           
Nearly 20 years later, Elisha Polk still holds the school record with 2,272 career kills. And it's not even close.
           
Named to Baylor volleyball's 25^th anniversary team in 2002, the Sacramento, Calif., native was a two-time first-team All-Big 12 pick, four-time Academic All-Big 12 and an all-region selection as a senior in 1999.
           
Along with all her other accolades, Polk (1996-99) can now add the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame. She is part of the 2018 class that will be inducted Sept. 21 and joins Cory Sivertson (1991-94) as the only volleyball players in the Hall of Fame.
           
"I didn't know I was the second volleyball player (in the Hall of Fame)," she said. "That is amazing. All of this has been very mind-blowing."
           
Polk said her kills numbers weren't anything out of the ordinary, at least to her, "because the bar was set very, very early on." She led the team in kills in each of her three seasons and still has three of the top six marks in program history.
           
Still, when she sat down with then-head coach Brian Hosfeld, "it was never, 'OK, so the ball's just going to come to you like 93 percent of the time."
           
"A lot of times in volleyball, the outside just gets funneled so much because of other things you cannot control, like they have a really good server or things become crazy to where, 'Oh, we'll just throw it out there and try to make a play and hope we can recover or something.' It wasn't like I was a target.
           
"I understood, as an outside hitter, I was going to get a lot of touches. But, I don't think any of us knew that it was going to be that many touches every year, day-in and day-out. No, it wasn't by design, but that's what it became."
           
A late signee at Baylor when Hosfield left Long Beach State to take over a program heading into its first year in the Big 12, Polk said she knew that Hosfeld could help train her for the next level "if I wanted to play on."
           
"He's the reason I came," she said, "because I had seen him on the club circuit and I was familiar with the program where he had coached. I knew that if I wanted to play on, I would have the techniques and ability I needed."
           
Her twin sister, Antoinette Polk, stayed on the West Coast to play basketball and volleyball at USC and was part of the Trojans' Final Four team in 2000.
           
"My sister was actually brought on at USC on a basketball scholarship, but she played both her first two years," Elisha said. "That was not an option for me, so I visited various schools and ultimately I chose Baylor because Brian and I just hit off really well."
           
Other than fellow freshman Kia Young, the rest of the team was all recruited by the previous coaching staff, "but it was never a me against them thing," Polk said. "When I was on my recruiting trip, I think I had met all of them except, of course, Kia, because she was coming in with me. So, it was familiar, not uncomfortable."
           
After going through some growing pains, the team finally broke in Polk's senior season, when the Bears went 26-9 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to eventual national champion Penn State. In a 3-1 win over Temple in the first round, Polk had a monster double-double with 32 kills and 24 digs.
           
"I vividly remember Penn State, because we had played at a Penn State tournament (in 1996)," she said. "It was just kind of overwhelming. Yes, it was a goal to get to the NCAA Tournament and we finally made it, I just wish we would have done better. It was a David and Goliath story, but it was a good experience."
           
Named to the USA team for the 1999 Pan-Am Games, Polk turned down that opportunity to prepare for her senior season. And then, after graduating the next year with a degree in management information systems and international business, she decided not to pursue a pro career overseas.
           
"The whole time, I kind of thought that was going to be my path," she said. "But then when it came down to it, like actually thinking about the logistics of all of it and can I really go over to a foreign country and figure it out, it kind of freaked me out a little bit. I thought I might just study for the LSAT and go straight into law school, and I was like, 'No, I need a break from school.'''
           
That break turned into 10 years.
           
Polk went into the workforce with Bank of America and Wells Fargo before going to law school in 2010 at the University of South Carolina.
           
"It only took me 10 years to get it together," she said.
           
Overall, her experience in law school was a good one, but Polk said studying for the bar exam is something that "I would not wish on my worst enemy."
           
"Passing the bar is something I can't even describe to people because it is just so intense," she said. "it was very fulfilling to get past it, but then what's next?"
           
Since graduating and passing the bar, Polk has spent the last five years with the Texas Department of Banking as a financial examiner in the Dallas regional office.
           
"During law school, I interned at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and you have a lot of attorneys there that happen to be commissioned financial examiners," Polk said. "They told me the best way to learn the banking business is to either work in a bank or become an examiner. The whole design behind me becoming a financial examiner is to figure out how things are run successfully, and not. And then, eventually the goal is to do something with banking policy, but definitely use my license in practice."
           
Joining Polk in the 2018 Hall of Fame class are former football players Gary Baxter and Ronnie "Bo" Lee, NCAA tennis champion Zuzana Zemenova, golf coach and player Tim Hobby, longtime trainer Mike Sims and softball All-American Chelsi Lake Reichenstein.

The Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, in the Brazos Room at the Waco Convention Center. Tickets cost $50 per person and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at Tammy_Hardin@baylor.edu.