The legacy of Division I athletes continues for the McGrew family.

Reggie McGrew, who is currently a part of the University of Oklahoma football coaching staff, played football for the University of Florida and in the NFL, and his wife, Nina Foster McGrew, was an SEC Player of the Year for the Gators volleyball team in the mid-90s.

On Thursday at Santa Fe High School in Alachua, their daughter, Gia, signed her Letter of Intent to play volleyball for the University of Iowa.

“I’m just so incredibly blessed for this coaching staff to give me this opportunity,” she said. “I’m just really excited to get in the gym and get to work…most importantly, I built a connection and a bond with the coaching staff (at Iowa) that I think is really important.”

She’ll get a chance to compete in the Big 10 against Nebraska, Penn State, Wisconsin, and Purdue, all of whom are ranked among the 10 teams in the country in the latest AVCA Rankings.

“For her, it’s a long time coming,” said Santa Fe coach Eric Marshall. “She’s been playing this sport for a long time. We knew from age 12 that she was going to get to this spot, just where was she going to go, but for her, she’s worked and worked and worked, so she deserves it for sure.”

McGrew played her freshman year at GHS, then the senior outside hitter spent the next two years at Mount St. Mary Catholic High School in Oklahoma City (OK).

“I anticipate that Gia will quickly become a fan favorite,” Iowa Associate Head Coach Brian Yale said on the Hawkeyes website. “She plays the game with such a passion and infectious competitive drive. Her raw power and physicality will be a welcome addition to the gym come January. As a person and teammate, Gia is mature and respectful beyond her years. She comes from a strong, athletic family background. Gia is a leader in both words and actions, and I expect her to continue to be just that with our team from day one.”

As a senior for the Raiders (20-8) in 2024, McGrew finished with 322 kills for an average of 3.8 kills per set.

“You look at the stats and it went really, really well,” Marshall said. “And even though the scores don’t show it in our last game (3-0 loss at Merritt Island in the 4A regional semifinals), she was unstoppable. We just couldn’t get her the ball, but when she gets the ball, she really hit at a really high percentage which just shows you how difficult she was to defend. Obviously, I wanted to get her a state championship, but I think if you asked her she probably had a lot of fun. It was a fun team.”

She only played one season for the Raiders, but the bond was there right away.

“I was very new to the team, and they just welcomed me in, and we just had a blast, and I really think that’s where we got our team chemistry from,” said McGrew, who returned to the area so that she could graduate from high school early and be in Iowa in January.

This past season, McGrew helped lead Santa Fe to the 4A-District 5 championship, followed by a first-round playoff win against Satellite (Satellite Beach) thanks to 17 kills and seven digs.

Despite the second round playoff loss, the Raiders finished with a 20-win season and a district title.

“This team was something special,” McGrew said. “It has definitely been one of my favorite teams to be a part of and the coaching staff is just incredible. They’ve trained me since I was little, so it was just really like a very sweet moment for me.”

Now she can turn her focus to the Big 10, which she said was a “dream come true.”

“I’m about to go into the Big 10 so I want to up my game in every aspect and learn how to be a better person from it,” said McGrew, who noted she needed to improve her skills and intensity.

Marshall described her play as “violent.”

“The way she hits the ball, most volleyball people describe it as a heavy ball. A heavy ball is very difficult to dig because of the way it comes off her hand, the speed, the velocity, it’s a violent swing,” he said. “It’s really hard to defend.”

McGrew’s pedigree includes being a 2024 AAU Nationals Premier Division National Champion, MVP of the 2024 AAU Nationals Premier Division, USA Volleyball National Team Development Program invitee in 2021, and she was a USA Girls Junior National Championship All-Tournament Team selection in 2021.

She was a team captain as a senior in 2024 and team MVP as a junior in 2023. She was also an Oklahoma 5A State Champion in 2022.

Now she’s on to her next chapter in life and will get looked at as both a right-side hitter and outside hitter at Iowa.

“In college, if you want to play outside you have to pass, a lot, so she’s been working a lot on that in our gym in case she gets that opportunity,” Marshall said. “The plan was for her to play right side when she came here. We thought we had the rotation exactly what we needed but come to find out it didn’t work for us.”

The reason for the move was to give her more touches, more balls, more offensive opportunities.

“We just weren’t passing well enough to get her the ball on the right side,” Marshall said. “When we moved her to the outside that’s where we saw our season change.”

Marshall said that coming from an athletic family means a lot.

“It’s everything,” he said. “Not only does she come from an athletic family, but she also comes from an incredible family. They don’t push her like a Division-I athlete. That’s not the way they raised her. They let her go her own path, but they were able to get her to understand the recruiting process, what it takes, but Gia was always the one who had to do the work.”