NCAA women’s volleyball: Coaching updates, schedules, more world travelers

There are so many NCAA teams either in the midst of international trips or planning on them. We’ve got an update from Tim Kelly and Bring It USA.

Since our last NCAA women’s volleyball update on May 15, there have been some coaching transactions, schedule releases and more.

Coaching carousel

UCF promoted Jenny Maurer, who has been the UCF associate head coach and recruiting coordinator the last seven years. She takes over for Todd Dagenais, who left to become the head coach of the Pro Volleyball Federation Atlanta franchise.

Maurer (then Cafazza), who was the head coach at Bradley when she moved to Orlando, was an All-American setter at Division III Washington University in her hometown of St. Louis. Before going to Bradley, she was head coach at Lehigh, hired at 30.

East Tennessee State hired Delaware State coach Dr. Bruce Atkinson. This past season, Delaware State won the MEAC and played Nebraska in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Atkinson was previously head coach at Winthrop, Towson and Hawai’i-Hilo. He takes over a ETSU program that finished 21-8 last season, 15-1 in the SoCon. After the season, fourth-year head coach Benavia Jenkins left for Michigan to be associate head coach.

Denver is still without a coach and now the Summit League program is without a setter. Lorrin Poulter transferred to Purdue for her graduate year and freshman Lauren Carter has transferred to Northwestern.

Denver’s spring roster shows two outsides, three right sides, two middle blockers and three liberos. Coach Tom Hogan resigned in early April after missing most of the 2022 season battling cancer. 

Louisiana-Monroe of the Southland Conference and Dartmouth of the Ivy League are also still without a coach.

Schedules

The Big 12 announced its 2023 slate and, of course, it has a different look with the addition of Houston, BYU, UCF and Cincinnati. For that matter, the first match is Wednesday, September 20, when Houston goes to BYU.

Of note, Texas is home for BYU September 28-29, and plays host to Baylor October 26-27. This is the last season for Texas and Oklahoma before they go to the SEC.

Click here for the Big 12 news release and schedule.

The ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC have yet to officially announce their schedules, but teams are announcing their respective slates. Arkansas and Kentucky, for example, have stories on their schedules. 

The Atlantic 10 and Conference USA schedules must be available, because schools from those conferences have announced, including Western Kentucky.

91,000 for Nebraska?

The Huskers will play Omaha on August 30 in the football stadium in Lincoln. As we noted in our story on Aprll 27, there were more than 82,000 tickets sold in less than 48 hours. 

Now Nebraska AD Trev Albert claims the match could draw a capacity 91,000.

“Well we’re pretty excited about it,” Alberts said on the Huskers Radio Network. “Again, we keep pinching ourself going, ‘are you kidding me?’ But we’re still working through a few things, but we actually think that the final total capacity’s gonna be at 91,000.”

Read the entire story at Rival.com’s Inside Nebraska. 

On tour with Bring It USA

The places they’ve been and volleyball stories they’ll tell. This is straight from Tim Kelly of Bring It USA on Monday:

Washington State leaves from Croatia tomorrow.
BYU wrapping up in Athens the next day
Texas Tech leaves from Milan the next day.
Old Dominion from Lisbon the next day.
Tampa from Rome the next day.
SMU from Venice on the 30tt.

USC arrives in Sao Paulo tomorrow.
Loyola in Madrid on the 26th.
Maryland arrives to Maribor on the 28th.
Hawaii arrives to Sao Paulo the same day.
Bethel is in Costa Rica starting Monday morning.

The following week gets heavy with the following arrivals:
May 31 — Iowa State, Athens; Cincinnati, Budapest.
June 1 — Creighton, Rome.
June 2 — Auburn, Milan; Rice, Sao Paulo.
June 3 — Wisconsin, Istanbul.
June 4 — Sonoma State, Rome.

The following week:
June 6 — Cornell College, Barcelona; Marquette, Warsaw; Ohio State, Athens.
June 7 — Sacramento State, Funchal, Madeira, Portugal; and UCF in Prague.

Later in June we have:
Georgia Southern (only team going to Argentina), Louisville (Brazil), Wofford, Colorado, Stanford (Istanbul, Prague Maribor), Metro State, and Fordham (the only DI team going to Japan).

We wrote about traveling teams in our last report, including TK on a camel.