When Aubrey Goodere began showing flashes of college volleyball potential in high school, coaches often told her: "Do things that stand out." "Use connections."
So when it came time to fill out a recruiting questionnaire for her target destination, Grand Canyon, she cut to the chase.
"My mom played here, and I would love to beat all her old records," she wrote in 2022, before her high school junior year.
Just four years later, halfway into her GCU tenure, the 6-foot-3 junior, known for blocks, is on her way to a landmark accomplishment.
She is making good on her goal to bump the Lopes blocks record that her mother, Kendra, set 26 years ago. Aubrey has tallied 195 blocks in two GCU seasons, putting her on pace to topple her mom's mark of 364, set during her 1997-2000 career at GCU.
"It's awesome that I'm going to beat it," Aubrey said. "At this point, it's not even an option, like 'I could beat it.' I have to beat it."
When it comes to athletic skill, the volleyball does not fall far from the family tree.
Kendra once ran into her family's burning house to save her volleyball and uniform; that same passion called Aubrey to the sport by osmosis.
As a girl, Aubrey loved tagging along to the club volleyball practices her mother coached. Too young to play, she shagged balls at the most and sat and colored at the least.
But when Aubrey was fed up with struggling at T-ball and wearing a bumble bee costume for tap dance, her mom told her she needed to pick another activity.
"She was holding out for volleyball, and I was coaching club," Kendra said. "I asked if she wanted to play club, and she said she didn't think she was ready. I said, 'Well, I won't ask you again because I don't ever want to push. But when you're ready, you come to me.'"
Aubrey, her older brother, Jeffrey, and Kendra were passing in the backyard about a year later when Aubrey could not deny the tug any longer. It echoed Kendra's entry to volleyball in the family backyard, when her older sister, Shonda, was a setter and needed Kendra to be a hitter as she practiced on a backyard net.
Kendra (2000) & Aubrey (2026)
But the path to GCU volleyball was not a genetic sure thing just because of her family legacy. Kendra had been a 6-foot Lopes volleyball player and her father, Justin, was a 6-foot-8 Lopes basketball player for the 1998-99 and 1999-2000 seasons.
"The first couple of years, she was terrible," Kendra said. "She was awful. I love her dearly, but she knows."
Aubrey agreed. "I loved it, but I was just so bad. I couldn't do anything. It was honestly a hard watch."
Now, Aubrey dominates on the court.
She's hard on GCU opponents, morphing into a rising wall above the net for blocks and keeping the defense off balance as a middle blocker. She delivered 302 career kills in her freshman and sophomore seasons, including an 18-kill, seven-block match against Wyoming.
"She sets a vibe in our gym that is loose and free, which is a great thing for this day and age of the stress," Lopes head coach Kendra Potts said. "Not only is her physical game coming along and we get to celebrate her and put her to higher expectations, but she's also doing it. She put in more work this summer than I've ever seen, and she's come back super physical. Now, she challenges us as coaches to make sure we're push her to move the needle a little more."
That dominance wasn't true in the beginning. Because she joined volleyball later than other club players, she rode the bench on the lowest-level squad.
Before her second season, she turned down a travel squad spot to continue working on fundamentals. When the travel squad wanted to add her later for a national tournament, she declined to not leave her team without a middle blocker.
That dedication served her well. When she elevated to the travel team as an eighth grader, she flourished like a chip off her mother's block. Kendra's GCU coach, Kris Naber, coached club and said, "I know exactly which one is your daughter. She moves like you from behind."
Aubrey would continue her volleyball rise, starting for four varsity seasons at Estrella Foothills High School in Buckeye – the same as her mom, a four-year varsity starter at Buckeye High School.
Before Aubrey began practicing as a Lope in Antelope Gymnasium, where Kendra once played, the Gooderes attended GCU matches that left Aubrey in awe. She locked in on every move by players and coaches.
Once recruiting started, "It started to shift for me, and volleyball wasn't just a fun thing for me to do," Aubrey said. "I wanted to be good at it. I wanted to pursue something bigger, like going to college and getting a scholarship. Once I started seeing myself playing in college, GCU was the only thing on my mind."
After making the GCU team, Kendra, who gave Aubrey a watch engraved with a Lope as her senior gift, learned that her GCU record for blocks still stood. And her daughter, middle blocker Aubrey, locked in on beating it.
If you know anything about the Gooderes, you know that loyalty and tradition pervades the family.
Kendra is an instructional assistant and assistant principal for Liberty Elementary, the school she once attended, as well as Loretto Zumbro Elementary, both in Buckeye. And Aubrey is on track to graduate in three years from her mother's university alma mater, although the campus and volleyball scene have evolved massively since her parents attended, with athletics elevating to Division I and an enrollment boom that went from an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 ground students in 2000 to 25,000 today.
As Aubrey plays for winning teams, just as Kendra did, she turns to the same Global Credit Union Arena section each match for guidance and support. That faithful family contingent will be missing her grandmother, elementary school principal Lorrese Roer, or "Mimi" to Aubrey, after she passed away this summer.
Just as her mother's dedication fueled her volleyball career, Kendra does that for Aubrey – even if it means watching her topple her GCU blocks record before the family's second Lopes act closes.
"If you're going to have a record bumped down, having your kid's name above it means you've done something right," Kendra said.
"It's been an absolute joy to watch her. She wants to give her team exactly what they expect and deserve from her. She's worked hard. She's stayed focused. She's pretty amazing. I couldn't have asked for a better daughter."
