Taylor Takeda has played volleyball at three different levels over the past three years and excelled at every one.

The first-year Butler sophomore, forced to transfer after her previous school shut down, is one of two Bulldogs to play in every set this season. The 2015 Kamehameha alumna ranked sixth in the Big East with 4.06 digs per set as of Oct. 31, and her 443 total digs this year rank third.

Butler, currently 6-8 in conference, trails Villanova by two games for fourth place with four matches to go.

The top four teams advance to the Big East tournament and the Bulldogs play at Villanova this weekend.

“Everybody we have left (to play), we’ve either gone to five with or beaten,” Takeda said. “So if we can pull out the wins against the (teams) we lost to and beat the (teams) we already beat, hopefully the cards fall into our favor and we’ll be in the position (to make the playoffs).”

A three-time state finalist and one-time state champion at Kamehameha, Takeda earned a partial scholarship to Division II Dowling College in New York after filling out an online questionnaire. If she didn’t play volleyball, she wanted to attend Grand Canyon University in Arizona, but instead ended up at a small college on the East Coast.

“When they finally offered me a spot (on the volleyball team), I was over the moon,” Takeda said. “I accepted it right away. It was really small, but I feel like it was a really great choice for me.”

Her freshman year went so well that she was named by the American Volleyball Coaches Association as the freshman of the year in the East Region.

However, after the season ended, rumors began to swirl that the school was in trouble financially.

It wasn’t until after Takeda got home for the summer, with her flight back in August already booked, that she found out the school would close. If it hadn’t, she definitely would have returned for her sophomore year.

“When I got the email, I was devastated,” Takeda said. “I went outside to my dad and showed him the email and he asked me if I was OK. I said, ‘No,’ and started crying.”

Takeda said she spent the next day at home, in bed. Her coach at Dowling told her not to talk to any coaches to avoid any possible recruiting violations.

She had no colleges lined up to enroll in and wasn’t sure her volleyball career would continue.

To make matters worse, her father, Daryl, was battling cancer. He was diagnosed a week after Takeda’s high school graduation, but it never got in the way of her schooling.

“Before I could even think about it, my dad told me he didn’t want me to think about what I wanted to do,” Takeda said. “He knew how important getting an education is and didn’t want me to stop my life to see what happens when I have this opportunity in front of me.”

Takeda said her father went into remission later that year but the cancer came back a couple of months later.

“We’ve been dealing with it ever since,” Takeda said.

He is still fighting to this day, but when the Butler games are streamed online, he always watches.

Takeda wound up receiving a full athletic scholarship over the summer after the Butler coaching staff had originally contacted one of her Dowling teammates.

If Dowling hadn’t closed down, she’d be on a partial scholarship to a Division II school instead of getting a full ride to a Division I college.

“I was just thinking how odd it is that it actually ended up working out better not only for me, but my family,” Takeda said. “The universe works in mysterious ways.”