Kentucky volleyball reloads in preparation for another gauntlet of a season
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky aims for ninth straight SEC title despite tough competition in 2025.
- Wildcats face all 2024 Final Four teams in rigorous nonconference schedule.
- Brooklyn DeLeye returns after MVP summer; UK roster adds key transfers, depth.
2025 isn’t a typical year for SEC volleyball.
Not even for No. 7 Kentucky, the conference’s mainstay success story recently, predicted to again win the league championship — which would mark nine consecutive seasons with at least a share of the SEC title.
You “have to consider that in your voting process,” UK coach Craig Skinner said, but he sees a slew of SEC challengers.
“… Texas obviously returns what they return,” Skinner said. “Texas A&M has an incredible team coming back. Missouri has reloaded again. Tennessee is very good again. Who knows? You know what I think about preseason polls; they don’t mean a whole lot, but a sign of respect, I guess, is the best thing I can say.”
Last year, the Wildcats (23-8, 14-2 SEC) defeated two ranked opponents during regular-season play and reached an NCAA Tournament regional final before falling 3-0 to No. 1 seed Pittsburgh.
This season marks the return of Vanderbilt volleyball — former UK associate head coach Anders Nelson is the Commodores’ head coach, and ex-Cat Azhani Tealer is an assistant — for the first time in 45 years and the start of the Showdown at the Net Volleyball Tournament, which will pit each of the 16 SEC programs against 16 of the 18 ACC teams in early September.
This season will also see the SEC Volleyball Tournament return for the first time since 2005. It’ll be played Nov. 21-25 in Savannah, Georgia.
“I love the fact that we’re getting a chance to compete in a tournament, single elimination, prior to the NCAA Tournament, that none of the other top leagues in the country are doing yet,” Skinner said. “How that affects our players and the end of the season, TBD. Location, don’t know yet. Hopefully, Savannah can bring a volleyball crowd there. But yeah, it’s an exciting time.”
In Lexington, Skinner and his team have welcomed three new freshmen — four, if you count redshirt freshman Hannah Benjamin, who tore her ACL last summer — plus an atypical three incoming transfers and the program’s first true competition for starting setter in nearly a decade.
The Wildcats, who skew younger with just one senior in decorated transfer outside hitter Eva Hudson (Purdue), might look different from recent years’ rosters but remain very much in the hunt for a follow-up to 2020’s national championship. UK was the first — and still technically only — SEC program to ever hoist the coveted trophy, given Texas’ national championships were won prior to its move to the conference.
Skinner acknowledges his responsibility to “drag them down the tracks” toward success, but said that “it’s not going to be as powerful as if they’re driving the train on their own.” The reigning SEC Coach of the Year praised Hudson and UK’s group of juniors for their ability to start that engine from within.
“All of them were recruited into this knowing that, ‘This is your program. Wherever you take us is where we’re gonna go. I’ll help guide us down the road, our staff will help get us in the right direction, but you have to drive the bus,’” Skinner said. “It is that we want them to feel like it’s bigger than themselves.”
It’s also helpful that, despite a shifting, explosive time for the popularity of women’s college volleyball, UK fans can rest assured that some things really do stay the same.
Nebraska volleyball highlights Kentucky schedule
Once again, Skinner has gifted his roster a nonconference schedule that would win the respect of even the sport’s toughest competitors.
The Wildcats are slated to face each of the Final Four teams from last season, nine teams ranked within the American Volleyball Coaches preseason top 25 and four other opponents who also received top-25 votes.
Three of those highly anticipated, ranked matchups — including the Sept. 5 contest at No. 2 Penn State and the Sept. 10 match against No. 3 Pittsburgh at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas — occur before UK’s home opener against No. 10 SMU on Sept. 13.
But first, the Wildcats will travel to Nashville to open the season with a match at Lipscomb on Saturday before facing No. 1 Nebraska on Sunday at the Sprouts Farmers Market Broadway Block Party.
The Cornhuskers own a 12-2 advantage in the all-time series, and the Wildcats will have their hands full. But Skinner is happy to stick to business as usual to see if difficult tests can push his young roster to the next level.
“’OK, we schedule tough because we know we have some great players and have a chance at the end of the year to compete for a national championship,” Skinner said. “… (It) is what we typically do, maybe a little even a little bit tougher. All four of the Final Four teams from last year are on our schedule. But I do not feel like we will get to where we want to go if we don’t play these teams.”
Kentucky volleyball roster is stacked
The Wildcats return four of their five 2024 All-SEC honorees, including outside hitter and reigning SEC Player of the Year Brooklyn DeLeye, who spent the summer with USA Volleyball as a member of the 2025 Women’s U21 Pan American Cup roster and won MVP in the tournament.
“USA Volleyball, I mean, it’s the cream of the crop of all the players in the country,” Skinner said, “so they love that chance. They go through an evaluation process. There’s people all over the country evaluating our players during the season. They get at least a week, and then the players that make the travel roster get another week of competing, and so any time you’re playing at that high a level, with people around you that are equally as talented as you are, it benefits them, but it also benefits us.”
Though she’s not the only Wildcat to have earned Team USA opportunities this summer, DeLeye’s return and designation as an AVCA 2025 Player of the Year Watch List selection alongside Hudson, means that even the best of Kentucky might be poised to level up.
“I think that physically and mentally, there’s always room to improve,” Skinner said, adding that DeLeye can “learn to give herself some grace.
“She’s not always going to be perfect, and Brooklyn strives to be perfect all the time. So how do we find that balance of motivation and understanding that there’s learning opportunities in between? Little things like that that help her take the next level.”
In addition to DeLeye and Hudson, redshirt sophomore middle blocker Brooke Bultema and junior libero Molly Tuozzo earned All-SEC preseason honors, but the talent doesn’t stop there. Sophomore Asia Thigpen, who was named to the All-SEC Freshman Team with Bultema last season, is back for more. As is redshirt sophomore middle blocker Jordyn Dailey and redshirt sophomore Ava Sarafa, who will be competing with incoming freshman Kassie O’Brien for the starting setter position.
Joining Hudson as transfers are redshirt junior middle blocker Lizzie Carr, who averaged 1.52 kills per set for Purdue last season, and junior defensive specialist/libero Molly Berezowitz, who arrives at UK after averaging 1.97 digs per set last season for a Marquette team that reached an NCAA Tournament regional semifinal. Berezowitz is the younger sister of ex-Cat Maddie Berezowitz (2019-22), who played on UK’s national championship team.
Healthy competition is beneficial for a program in search of another national championship. In Skinner’s mind, development isn’t limited to on-court success — especially when you’re dealing with All-Americans.
“You’re not going to overhaul someone like that, but keep them motivated,” Skinner said. “How can they become a better leader by example? How can they say things at the right time that might help someone that was in her shoes two years ago? But some of it is also bringing someone like Eva Hudson into the program, that led the Big Ten in kills. It’s like, ‘Oh, she’s pretty good. I better step it up today.’”
