‘Bigger Than Myself’ – Vinson Destined to do ‘Special Stuff’
Pete DiPrimio | IUHoosiers.com
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Let’s start with the dreams.
Charlotte Vinson sits comfortably in a Wilkinson Hall office. The freshman outside hitter has just wrapped up a rigorous Indiana volleyball practice. She is healthy and fit and, finally, cleared to play -- a nationally elite freshman prospect on a team building toward nationally elite status.
“I’m excited to be part of something that’s bigger than myself,” she says.
Flash back to May of 2024.
Vinson lies sedated on life support in an Indianapolis Riley Children’s Hospital bed. What starts as a low-grade fever quickly escalates as an invasive strain of strep overwhelms her immune system and sends her into toxic shock syndrome. A helicopter airlifts her from Yorktown, Indiana, to Riley. She loses her vision. Her kidneys are failing. Her organs are shutting down. Her blood pressure drops; her heart rate soars; her toes and hands darken suggesting necrosis, the premature death of tissue. For over a week, the worst is feared.
Shock hits hard -- Vinson is too young for this, too healthy for this, too good a person for this. One of the nation’s best high school volleyball players, the Yorktown standout has a scholarship to IU and limitless possibilities.
And yet …
Her father, Phil, later tells the Indianapolis Star that in that moment, volleyball doesn’t matter, that the only thing that does is that his daughter is alive. He tells The Star that it is “the worst day of our lives.”
Her mother, Erin, a family doctor, tells The Star that they are a religious family and ask the Lord to “take over and protect our baby.”
Charlotte Vinson fights fiercely; her family and the Yorktown High School volleyball team led by coach Stephanie Bloom, fight fiercely; the Yorktown community and, in truth, the entire state of Indiana volleyball community, the Indiana University coaching staff, coaches and players from around the country, they all fight fiercely with her.
Then, a breakthrough comes.
The dreams come.
“I kept having these dreams,” Vinson says. “It could have been all the meds I was on. It was like, in the dreams, everything was normal again. I was in a practice, and everything was back to normal.
“Then I woke up, and it wasn’t normal, but having that split second in a dream that I really believed I was back to normal and everything was okay, helped me push through. I was like, ‘I’m going to get to that point again.’”
Vinson is at that point, and in so many ways, beyond it. The cliché that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is on full display.
“I’ve gotten stronger,” she says. She has a soft voice and a light-up-the-room smile, but the steel in her eyes suggests toughness forged by her fight back from the brink. Scars on her neck and leg from tubes to a ECMO machine that helped keep her alive reflect the physical price she has paid. “I’ve had to build back so much muscle. I understand how to gain weight and build back more muscle.”
She understands more than that.
“Going through what I have makes me cherish every moment I get on the court. I was told I’d never play volleyball at a high level again. Just being here and getting the chance to step on the floor, I cherish it more.”
Vinson also understands this -- the dream is just beginning.
The beginning of a special chapter. ??
— Indiana Volleyball (@IndianaVB) October 13, 2025
So great to see @Charlotte_v9 make her collegiate debut for the Hoosiers today! pic.twitter.com/ONgkMypfdi
Frustration hit hard. Vinson was lying in a Riley Hospital bed, surgery and the need for a ventilator and a dialysis machine in her rearview mirror, and now facing … what? She tried to sit up and couldn’t. An extraordinary athlete who jumped and ran and cut and hammered volleyballs in extraordinary ways now couldn’t do the most ordinary of things.
Why me, she asked. There was no good answer.
“All I wanted to do was sit up by myself,” she says. “At some points, I couldn’t lift my arms. It was a couple of hard days, a couple of eye-opening days. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”
She could, of course. She did, of course.
“I kept pushing through.”
Vinson didn’t push alone. Her parents, her sister Kate and brother Andrew, and all the others pushed with her.
Erin Vinson was there Charlotte says, from, “The first night to the last. She was there every moment.” Phil was there nearly as often when he wasn’t transporting Andrew back and forth from Riley to Yorktown.
“There was a lot of rallying throughout my community, even here at IU, the volleyball community,” Vinson says. “A lot of people were on my side.
“I grew in my faith a lot. All the prayers I received and the communities that rallied for me got me through it.”
Two weeks into her hospital stay, Vinson was walking, taking laps around the ICU while pulling her IV pole with her. Two weeks after that, she went home, 20 pounds lighter, but steeled for the next challenge, of which there were many. By mid-August, she was practicing with her Yorktown teammates; by early September, she was playing, recording a team-high 13 kills against Wapahani. By the end of October, she says, “I was starting to feel like myself again, play like myself again.”
And yet, another challenge was coming.
Indiana volleyball coach Steve Aird never wavered in his commitment to Vinson.
“She would be on the roster if she played volleyball again or not,” he says from his Wilkinson Hall office. “That was my commitment to the kid and the family. I was steadfast in that. I wanted to make sure she would be taken care of regardless.”
Aird says he spent a couple of days at the hospital with the family, "especially during some of the darker days, when doctors weren't sure she was going to make it. You didn't know what the outcome would be, if she would come out of it able to return to society in general and be a functioning adult. It was frightening.”
Then, it became inspiring.
"It's a family I've known and cared about for a long time,” Aird says. “To have a player go through that, it changes your perspective of life. The fact that she’s able to not only compete at this level but compete well is surreal.
“To watch her train is special. It's a reminder every day when you see her that there’s more to life than the sport or the job. At the same time, she’s as competitive as it gets. She wants to win.”
He pauses.
“She’s easy to coach. She wants to be great.”
Aird says Vinson is "destined to do special stuff -- hopefully in the sport, and in life."
"She’s a unique kid with a great family. Everyone is thrilled she’s healthy. That she’s able to play volleyball at this level is icing on the cake.”
It's always about controlling what you can control, about not letting outside factors affect you and your approach, and if that's easy to say and not to do, it doesn't make it any less true.
Vinson arrived in Bloomington last summer ready to play. She’d recovered to thrive in her Yorktown High School senior season, and then with Munciana, one of the nation’s top club volleyball teams. She won the 2024 Indiana High School Volleyball Coaches Association Ms. Volleyball award, made the 2025 USA Girls U19 team, earned prep All-America honors and finish as the nation’s No. 25 overall recruit.
Vinson also led Yorktown to Class 4A runner-up finishes in 2022 and ’24 while totaling 1,940 kills, 968 digs, 199 aces and 134 blocks.
“She could have had her pick of schools,” Aird says. “The whole country wanted her. I thought IU was a good fit for her.”
Vinson agreed. She trained with the Hoosiers last summer. She was the highest-rated recruit in the highest-rated recruiting class in Hoosier history.
But IU doctors, cautious about Vinson being able to withstand the rigors of major college volleyball, didn’t clear her to play for this season’s first 10 games.
Aird says it reflected “how much everyone here cared about her as a person and not just a player.”
“The No. 1 thing was everyone wanted her to be healthy and happy. The delay came from a lot of love.”
Vinson made the most of it by following up on a lesson learned amid her recovery -- volleyball is what she does, not who she is.
“I found myself outside of volleyball. Before everything happened last year, I didn’t know who I was outside of volleyball. I know now I’m not only a volleyball player. I’m also so many different things.”
Still, frustration grew until doctors finally cleared her a couple of weeks ago.
“My teammates helped,” Vinson says. “When I got cleared, everyone was cheering and hugging me. They knew how much it meant to me.
“To finally be cleared was a big sigh of relief, but I have to keep working. Just because I’m cleared doesn’t mean I have an automatic position on the court, but now I get to dive in and really compete for a spot.”
And yet …
Aird says he’s known Vinson since middle school. He says he recruited her older sister, Kate, who played volleyball for Ball State and who is now an assistant director in IU’s compliance department.
“I’ve known that family for a long time,” Aird says. “I always had my eye on Kate’s little sister. I knew she was going to be awfully good.”
And so, she is.
“Outside of being one of the top-rated recruits in the history of the program,” Aird says, “her skill is obvious. She’s long and lean with a great arm. She can play at both pins. She’s good defensively. She can serve and pass. She’s a complete six-rotation volleyball player.”
Completeness clashes against current team success and lineup reality. Vinson didn’t get to play until the 16th game of the season in a road contest at Michigan State. The Hoosiers, loaded with veteran and young talent, are having one of the best seasons in school history.
They are 14-2, 5-1 in the Big Ten. That includes a road sweep of No. 17 USC and No. 24 UCLA that pushed them to No. 20 in the AVCA/Taraflex rankings. It was their first ranking since 2010. The 5-0 conference start was the best in program history.
Vinson plays the same position as on the right side as veteran Avry Tatum, one of the Big Ten’s best players (Tatum had a combined 31 kills against USC and UCLA, 187 for the season, and is closing in on 1,000 career kills.
The timing might not be now – but whenever she plays full time, Vinson will make a major impact.
“She gives us depth in a variety of ways,” Aird says. “Her engine is incredible. She’s a very competitive kid. She’s mild mannered and soft spoken off the court, incredibly intense on the court. It’s the best of both worlds.
“Now that she’s available, we’ll be able to experiment on how to use her.”
Tatum sees Vinson’s potential every day.
“She’s been such a great teammate,” Tatum says. “With her being the same position as me, she’s poured all of her energy into helping me. She’s been awesome.
“I’m real excited that she’s finally able to dress. She deserves to get some playing time. She’s been a great teammate. I’m so grateful to have her behind me. She constantly gives me amazing feedback.”
Vinson says she’s fine with whatever happens.
“Everyone wants to play. I would love to get on the court. We were talking about how whatever role you have, you have to be a star in that role but still compete for the different one you want.”
Still, make no mistake, Vinson is tired of watching.
“I’m okay with my role, but I’m also not. I want to do more. I’m trying to be the best I can be in the role that I have.”
As for the Hoosiers, Vinson says, “Everyone works hard. We all have the same goal.
“When we’re on, we’re on. We can’t be stopped. We’re all really competitive.”
Beyond volleyball, Vinson is majoring in psychology. When her playing days are over, she wants to coach.
“I want to stay in the sports world. Understanding how people’s minds work is beneficial for coaching and leading people. Having a psych degree helps me understand people.”
That’s no dream. It’s reality.
