(This is the first part in a series profiling this year's inductees for the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame and Wall of Honor, which will be posted every week at baylorbears.com.)
 
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            As a top-50 national recruit, Gatorade Player of the Year in Texas and MVP at the state tournament when she led Arlington Martin to the 5A state championship, setter Taylor Barnes had her pick of schools.

            With visits to Oklahoma and Pepperdine and a scheduled trip to defending national champion Washington, one of the most coveted players in the country signed with a Baylor volleyball team that was in the midst of its fourth-straight losing season.

            "A lot of people asked me, 'Why Baylor?' whenever I committed," she said. "I had some very angry college coaches when I called and told them I was going to Baylor. Even some of the Big 12 coaches said, 'Why Baylor?'''

            "Baylor was actually one of the first visits that I took, and there was just something special. It felt like home. I enjoyed the players and coaches and, obviously, the campus is beautiful. Coach (Jim) Barnes cared about you as a person and then as a volleyball player. And that went a long way for me. I just knew I was going to be in good hands at Baylor."

            Seventeen years after making that decision and 13 years after leading the Bears to their first Sweet 16 appearance, Taylor Barnes Fallon is going into the Baylor Athletics Hall of Fame as part of the 2022 class that will be inducted Nov. 18.

            "I was totally caught off guard, surprised, shocked," Fallon said of the call she received from Walter Abercrombie, Associate AD of the Baylor "B" Association. "I haven't played volleyball in 12 years now, so for this to kind of come out of the blue, I was so humbled and grateful. It just brought back a lot of good memories."

            Part of three Final Four volleyball teams in high school, Taylor said she also "wanted to go somewhere where I could help build a program, not somewhere that if you don't win a national championship, it's not a successful season."
            From her first collegiate match, a 3-1 win over UC Davis at a tournament in Berkeley, Calif., Fallon started 129-consecutive matches for the Bears at setter. As a freshman, she led the team in assists (1,353) and added a conference-best 61 aces for an 18-15 team.

            "Once you go out there and you start playing, you don't even think about it," Taylor said. "You just do what you do and play your best and start trying to connect as a team with all these new freshmen. Anna (Breyfogle Lyon) Katie (Sanders and I all started our freshman year together. And honestly, it reminds me of the team this year. They're young, but I'm excited to see these young players come together. I think they're going to be extremely dangerous."

            As a junior, Fallon led Baylor in assists per set (10.32) and attack percentage (.329) while cranking out a Big 12-high 49 aces with her impressive jump serves. After earning first-team All-Big 12 and honorable mention all-region honors, Taylor and 2020 Hall of Famer Anna Breyfogle Lyon were committed to close out their Baylor careers on a high note.

            "You always go into the season with the expectation that this is going to be our best season yet," Fallon said. "There was something about the spring of my junior year, where Anna, Katie and I said, 'Hey, we're on to something here. This is our last opportunity to give it our all.' So, we worked our tails off . . . and pushed everybody to try to have your best offseason so that we could go into our senior year with the best opportunity of winning."

            That paid off with an 11-0 start in 2009, including a five-set victory over then-No. 24 Purdue, with the Bears cracking the AVCA coaches' poll at No. 24 in Week 3. After making the poll just nine times in program history, Baylor was ranked for 10-straight weeks that season and finished at 20^th with a 24-10 record.

            "In the past, we might have been receiving votes or popped in and out of the top 25," Taylor said, "but my senior year we were consistently ranked in the top 25. One of my favorite memories of that senior year was every Monday, getting to see the Baylor name go up in the rankings. That was a part of pushing to get into the NCAA Tournament, because I knew we could beat anybody as long as we had the right mindset."

            Proving that point, Fallon had a triple-double with 38 assists, 11 digs and 10 kills in a 3-0 sweep of 11^th-ranked Iowa State on Sept. 23.

            "That was one of those turning points where we just said, we can push further," she said.

            Earning their third-ever NCAA Tournament bid and first in eight years, the Bears knocked off Georgia Tech in a 3-0 sweep to set up a second-round matchup with an eighth-seeded UCLA team on its home floor in the Pauley Pavilion.

            In the Bruins' first-ever first- or second-round NCAA Tournament loss at home, Barnes had her 10^th double-double of the season with 50 assists, 20 digs and eight kills to lead Baylor to a 3-1 victory and into the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history.

            "Their longtime coach (Andy Banachowski) was retiring after the season, so they had a lot on the line," Taylor said. "They were, obviously, the No. 8 seed, so everything was against us. But, Anna, Katie and I never really succumbed to the pressure of the UCLA hype. We knew we were really good, so let's just play our game and don't focus on the outside noise. I never thought we were ever going to lose. As long as we played our game, we were going to win."

            Repeat first-team All-Big 12 picks, Barnes Fallon and Breyfogle Lyon became Baylor's first All-Americans, earning AVCA honorable mention honors. Taylor broke the school and Big 12 records with 205 career service aces and still holds the Baylor record with 5,120 career assists.

            After that season ended with a 3-0 loss to ninth-seeded Cal, Fallon had shoulder surgery and "knew it was time to hang it up."

            Graduating with a communications degree, Taylor broke into the commercial real estate business in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, moved to Colorado in 2013 and has been real estate manager with the Zayo Group since May 2021.

            Taylor and her husband, Grant Fallon, live in Denver and have a three-month-old daughter, Kate.

            "It's such an incredible experience," Taylor said of being a mom. "It's exhausting, but magical. And it's a lot of work, but the unconditional love that you have for your child is all worth it."

            Joining Barnes Fallon in the 2022 class are Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Robert Griffin III and linebacker Doak Field from football, Gary Kafer and Quentin Iglehart-Summers from track and field, plus Jeremy Alcorn (men's golf), Tweety Carter (men's basketball) and Josh Ludy (baseball).

            The 2022 Hall of Fame banquet is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, in the Cashion Building Banquet Room on the Baylor University campus. Tickets are $50 per person, with table sponsorships also available at the green ($600) and gold ($800) levels and can be purchased by contacting the "B" Association at 254-710-3045 or by email at tammy_hardin@baylor.edu.