Adam Blair takes a deep breath, getting into his rhythm, “Boom. Boom. Boom.” The ball hits the floor. Blair holds the ball right in front of his face with his arms out straight, looking relaxed.  He throws the ball up; it reaches more than ten feet in the air.

He takes a skip, then soars up into the air using his high vertical jump, “ Wack.” The ball goes flying over the net, hitting in bounds. “Great serve, Adam,” Head Coach Jim Palilonis yells to him during practice.

Blair started playing volleyball in his sophomore year of high school at Lakota West, about 30 minutes north of campus in West Chester, Ohio.

“I remember it was lunch one day, and this big, six-five guy came up to me, and he was like, ‘Do you want to play volleyball?’ And I was like, ‘We have a volleyball team? I had no idea.’ And that’s just kind of where it all started,” Blair said.

Going to Lakota West shaped him as a person. He was a part of the choir and played sports, but it was all the different types of people he met at his high school that truly stuck with him.

“Lakota West is huge. There’s just so many people. I think being around all those people, you just learn a lot because there, everyone is on different walks of life, from just so many different cultures,” Blair said. “Just the large grouping of people and different types of people that you interact with, they’re all amazing people, and you always learn new stuff from other people.”

Before the Cincinnati native came to play for the Norse, he spent his freshman year at Wittenberg University in 2025, a Division three school in Springfield, Ohio. Blair came to Northern Kentucky not just for volleyball, but also for the proximity to home and academics.

“Then, Jim, our head coach, when we took that tour, I could see the passion he had for the team, and it definitely gave me a lot of confidence in coming here,” Blair said.

When recruiting Blair, Palilonis believes he found a gem. Palilonis saw the raw talent in him at Wittenberg, realizing that Blair was under-recruited by other schools.

“Oh, I got lucky,” Palilonis said. “I was actually reached out to by his former coach, who knew that [Blair] was looking to play at a higher level and wanted to play. [His former coach] knew that we were a new program and was seeing if we needed middles. And I was like, ‘That’s absolutely the position we need.’ We need an experienced middle, and so it was.” 

It wasn’t an easy decision for Blair; he loved all his guys at Wittenberg and found it to be a special program. But going to the highest level of collegiate volleyball opened up new horizons for him.

“You kind of grow too big for D3 like I did. And so now coming to this level, it’s just like, wow, I have so much more space to grow,” Blair said. “My favorite part about the game is that growth, so being able to come here and finally have more room, it’s just an amazing experience.”

When Blair made the transition to NKU, the person who made him feel welcome right away was Jordan Little, the assistant coach. Blair knows if anything happens, he can go to his office and have someone to talk to, believing that Little won’t let anyone struggle alone.

“Volleyball, right outside of volleyball, [on and off the court] Jordan is a really, really great guy, and he’s always there,” Blair said.

Blair has a knack for the game, loving how difficult the sport is, but he can relate that to life outside of volleyball with what the game has taught him throughout the years.

“It’s never the first mistake, is what I’d say, like from volleyball, it’s never the first mistake. You’re gonna make mistakes. It’s a hard game, high technical skills and all that stuff,” Blair said. “Life’s gonna come at you fast. Stuff’s gonna happen. You’re gonna make mistakes. But if you kind of sit in that mistake and you don’t move fast and don’t move past it, then you’re gonna make that second third. You’re gonna keep making mistakes. Just got to learn from it.”

Knowing how to balance athletics and being a student is important to Blair’s success. He finds it to be like a puzzle, piecing things together. He knows when he should be doing school assignments, working on his game and having a social life. For him, it’s being aware and not being afraid because being a student-athlete is difficult.

With Blair being one of Palilonis’ founding players, he is able to lay the foundation for the program. From his previous experience at Wittenberg, he sees things that are good and bad for the culture and can nip the bad things in the bud right away.

“It’s amazing,” Blair said. “I love the culture that we’re building. It’s new in some moments, even compared to Wittenberg, where that’s an established program. And there are guys that you can look up to and see how they act in certain situations. You kind of have to be that guy now. So we’re building the culture. But I think that’s even more amazing, because you kind of get a say in how the future of this program is going to look.”

Like many other college students, Blair doesn’t have a set plan after college. He changed his major from biology to psychology, something he’s always loved since he was 12, when he bought his first psychology textbook and read it from cover to cover. What he has in store after college is helping others. 

“I want to be a therapist. I want to be able to sit down with people, talk to them and help them, one on one, give them strategies to have a better life,” Blair said. 

Palilonis has learned a lot from Blair. At the start and end of each semester, they check with each player on the team. With a younger group, Palilonis sees that it is hard for them to say what they’re really thinking or really feeling, but not Blair. To him, Blair is very cerebral, very intelligent and will help you become better on and off the court.

“Adam acknowledged and said some of the things that I could be doing better, and I took it to heart. He was absolutely right. I told him he was right. It was more about me being better at communicating what I’m thinking or feeling at any given moment,” Palilonis said. “I think Adam’s a kid that is always trying to contribute to the greater good of the group, and trying to put in his two cents for the right reasons, trying to make people better.”

The future is bright for Blair, and his coach is really excited to see him develop as a Norse.

In his young career, Blair has seen a lot. There are a lot of stigmas around volleyball, with some believing that the sport itself isn’t as masculine as basketball or football, which makes it harder for people to get into the sport. Blair wants to break that stereotype and inspire others to chase the division one dream.

“Telling people you just got to go for it, and don’t worry about what other people think of the sport, especially once you start playing and you realize how fun it is, it’s an amazing sport to play,” Blair said. “Tell them, just try it. You just have to try it once, and you’ll fall in love. I promise.”