Alleah and Amarrah

By Austin Coats, Graduate Assistant/Communications

"When Amarrah gets a kill, I feel like I get a kill."

If you've watched Mississippi State volleyball, you've seen it because it happens often: a well-set ball from Alleah Stamatis finds the hand of Amarrah Cooks, who plants it into the ground for an earth-shattering kill.

It's a connection that's evident for anyone who watches the senior pairing work together on the court, and one that has developed over four seasons of friendship.

"It's seamless," MSU volleyball head coach Julie Darty said. "They don't really have to say much. They feel each other and know each other super well. Alleah knows when she can force balls to Amarrah in transition, and Amarrah knows when she needs to be up and work hard for Alleah."

What started as two freshmen walking from class to their dorms together freshman year at Jacksonville University has strengthened into a lifelong bond and a lethal combination on the court. As their senior season comes to a close, Cooks will be known as one of the most efficient attackers in MSU history, while Stamatis is set to join a club of just six Bulldogs before her to earn 1,000 assists in a single campaign.

"Amarrah's hitting efficiency is where it is because of the type of sets and the quality of sets that she's getting from Alleah," Darty said. "They credit each other for a lot of their success, and they know they couldn't have come this far and had the success without one another."

At the beginning of the relationship, they kept finding similarities in each other. Cooks called the process a "slow burn," and Stamatis said it was like "peeling back layers" to find two individuals meant to share a friendship and a volleyball court. In an identical sense of humor, "girl time," chilling in the living room or watching Cartoon Network, the foundation of a strong bond was being built.

"They are just really sweet girls that have big hearts," Darty said. "They are tough competitors, they love to compete, they're fierce."

Through two seasons at Jacksonville, Cooks and Stamatis were beginning to see the potential their connection could have on their performance as both student-athletes earned All-Atlantic Sun honors after their sophomore campaigns.

Their head coach, Julie Darty, knew she had something special brewing in the pairing. When it came time, she offered Cooks, Stamatis and then-rising sophomore Kendall Murr a new opportunity - to follow her to Mississippi State and the challenging SEC.

"Julie called us separately, and then I called Amarrah and was like, 'Did Julie talk to you?' and she was like 'Yeah,'" Stamatis said. "I was like, 'Are we going?' and we both said, 'If you're going, I'm going.'"

"I get the Julie Darty experience at a bigger school? That's a no-brainer," Cooks said. "I couldn't imagine playing for anybody else."

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite that easy. A "draining" transfer process tested everyone involved. Cooks and Stamatis got through it by sticking together through thick and thin.

"I feel like when tragedy strikes everybody holds on real tight," Cooks said. "I think we were all kind of relaxed and we had each other."

"It made us closer, and that spring we had a lot of fun," Stamatis added. "We worked through that and we could just enjoy each other's friendship afterwards knowing we were coming up here."

As the competition from the Atlantic Sun to the SEC amped up, nothing changed for Cooks and Stamatis. In the first year of the Julie Darty era, they continued to mature as volleyball players and as friends.

Both players played every set for Darty in her opening season at MSU, and Cooks even led the squad with 251 kills. When the dust settled on year one, Cooks and Stamatis already had eyes on year two, 2019, their senior season.

"Even from spring last year, we were like 'it's senior season,' and that was the mindset going in even before we were technically seniors," Stamatis said. "At the beginning we knew that just [had] to ball out."

In their final year, the two have become leaders either by designation or by example.

"They've grown up and matured together, and it's been cool to watch Alleah to come into a leadership role as a captain, but it's also been really cool to watch Amarrah come into a leadership role just with the middle blockers on her own, and not with that title," Darty said.

With their pure friendship, outstanding playing careers and overall example for the next group of Bulldogs, Cooks and Stamatis have been integral in building the foundation for what's to come in the Julie Darty era.

"I think we can step away feeling like we left everything out there," Stamatis said. "We've left the program better than how we found it."

"It's cool how recruiting works out, and how you piece together these classes, and they find their best friends playing collegiate volleyball," Darty said. "It just makes me really happy that they have each other.

"They've certainly left their mark on this program."

Mississippi State University Athletics

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