STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Leoni Kunz was born in Buffalo and moved to Knoxville, Tenn., at a young age.

However, Kunz holds a Liechtenstein passport and dual citizenship. And her family's roots are in Europe.

So the incoming freshman with the Stony Brook volleyball team has been afforded the opportunity to compete in the sport on an international stage during her teenage years.

Most recently, Kunz represented Liechtenstein on its national team last Christmastime as the tiny country (pop. 38,749) split matches with Luxembourg and Andorra.

She also had been expecting to represent her father's homeland in next spring's Games of the Small States of Europe, which would have included 10 of the continent's smallest countries. But the biennial event recently was canceled due to coronavirus, so she will have to wait until 2023 for her first opportunity to participate in that event.

"The country is so small, so they don't have a lot of volleyball players," Kunz said. "They really took me in."

Kunz's parents — mother Brigitte, who is Austrian, and father Christian from Liechtenstein — moved to the United States shortly before Kunz was born in 2002.

The family annually visits her father's homeland.

Language issues did present a challenge, though, while representing Liechtenstein.

Kunz is fluent in German after spending her sophomore year of high school as an exchange student in the country. But residents of Liechtenstein speak their own dialect of "Swiss German."

"It's a whole other language, pretty much," Kunz said. "They had to change up everything with the way they talked for me because I didn't understand it."

Even as an exchange student in the 10th grade in Germany, Kunz was exposed to high-level volleyball. She played for a top-division team there, even though she was considerably younger than her teammates.

"They were all either in college or had a job," Kunz said. "I was only 15 and they were all over 20. But they were great and the coaches were great."

Kunz attended high school at the Webb School in Knoxville. She earned three volleyball state championships — as an eighth grader, freshman and junior. Her sophomore year was spent abroad. And she missed the bulk of her senior season with a back injury.

Originally, Kunz had been a middle hitter, then a right side hitter. This past year she moved to outside hitter, the position she is expected to play at Stony Brook.

The Liechtenstein national team's coaches became aware of her volleyball prowess in Tennessee through word of mouth. They knew Kunz's uncle Stephan, who had represented Liechtenstein in the Winter Olympics in cross country skiing in 1994, 1998 and 2002.

"It's such a small country," Kunz said. "Everyone knows everyone. That's how I was able to play. The coaches knew my uncle."