By Allie Conwell
Back in her Whitney Young days, between serving as a two-year volleyball captain, leading her team in scoring as a junior and senior, and collecting CPL City Championships like Pokemon cards, Chelsea Thorpe liked to call herself “Chef Chels.”
Although the nickname never quite caught on with her high school classmates, the outside hitter for the University of North Carolina has proven she’s been cooking…both on and off the volleyball court.
A Chicago native, Thorpe knew she’d thrive best in a “city atmosphere” when choosing a college.
“Going to Ohio State, I really wanted to go somewhere that also had a lot of people,” Chelsea said.
The Young alumna had a strong start at OSU before transferring to UNC, playing in all 29 matches of her one season as a Buckeye, tallying the second-most kills on the team as a redshirt freshman.
Arguably as impressive?
Thorpe finally got people to start calling her “Chef.”
In high school, “everyone would be like, ‘nobody calls you that,’” she confessed. “So when I got to college, I’m like, ‘you know what? People are gonna call me Chef.’”
With a will and a way, people did.
“I would cook for all the athletes in my dorm, they would stop by. It was really fun,” she said. “At Ohio State, literally everybody knows me by ‘Chef’ now, and I just love cooking.”
After two years at OSU, Chef Chels wanted to turn up the heat – and the competitive UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School seemed like the perfect next move.
“When I made my switch to North Carolina…I also wanted that big atmosphere,” Thorpe explained, “but also on the academic and athletic side. So I was able to get that [at UNC].”
Moving to a new school is full of unknowns. As Chelsea put it, “you don’t really know if the grass is greener on the other side.”
But the former Dolphin’s transfer to Chapel Hill went swimmingly.
“I was really blessed to be able to come into a program that welcomed me with open arms,” she stated. “I think that might have been my favorite season.”
The season’s success doesn’t come as much of a surprise – as a redshirt sophomore, the UNC coaches let her cook. Thorpe started almost every match, accumulated 290 kills by the end of the season, and helped Carolina appear in its first NCAA Tournament since 2021.
“Nobody really expected us to get this far,” she revealed. “So it was just really cool to do with my teammates…they really become your family.”
Thorpe notoriously kills it on the court, but she’s a fierce competitor as a Business Administration student as well.
She’s been able to leverage her athletic career to gain uniquely valuable experiences in her professional field through Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities.
“Being a volleyball player, it’s not like these deals are coming at you, especially me,” she admitted. “I’m not the number one player in the country, so you just really have to be proactive and go out there and get it yourself.”
After signing with North Carolina-based student-athlete agency, Article 41, Thorpe landed NIL deals with popular brands like Athleta and Good Molecules skincare.
“Athleta was really cool to just try on some clothes and get some new gear,” said Thorpe. On the other hand, her partnership with Good Molecules was “almost like an internship, because it was so much outside the NIL deals.”
As a Good Molecules “Team Captain,” the Young alumna has refined her skills in marketing and brand promotion, become a Microsoft Excel pro, and even helped other athletes with their own content creation.
This summer, Thorpe added another internship with Home Depot to her resume in addition to coaching camps at UNC and perfecting her own craft in the gym.
The outside hitter has a lot on her plate, but that’s just the way she likes it. Back at Whitney Young, Thorpe didn’t just play volleyball – she played three instruments!
“Being an athlete, you can get so caught up in your sport,” Thorpe said. “Having something to do outside of that is really important. Don’t be a one-trick pony, right?”
And this pony’s got plenty of tricks up her sleeve.
Thorpe was Best Dressed at the 2025 UNC “Rammy” Awards, was chosen to serve on the Atlantic Coast Conference Student Advisory Committee Executive Board, and studied abroad in Portugal this summer.
Now, Thorpe is back at Carolina with her teammates and aiming to be the top college team the state this season.
“We all have a little bit of dog in us,” she said. “We are competitive and we’re not gonna go down without a fight.”
With the fall season just beginning, the Tar Heels are 5-0. Thorpe is already on a double-digit kills streak – and we can’t wait to see what else Chef Chels will serve up this year.
Photos courtesy of University of North Carolina Athletics
