With an opportunity to earn their third national title in four years at stake, the Texas Longhorns volleyball program prepares to start its 2025 season in just three days.
The Longhorns will kick off the year with an opportunity to rewrite the ending of last year’s season-ending matchup against Creighton. In the 2024 NCAA Women’s Volleyball tournament, the Longhorns were knocked out of the Sweet Sixteen by the Bluejays in a dominant fashion, losing 3-1.
Creighton is the first of 11 American Volleyball Coaches Association preseason top 25 teams Texas will face this season.
“Coming out, I try to schedule tough every single year because I think playing the best coaches and the best teams, you learn a lot about your team,” head coach Jerritt Elliott said. “At Texas, the goals are to try to win the conference and try to win the national championship, and you have a four month period to really get a learning curve going.”
Another one of these top-ranked opponents is No. 6 Stanford, which doubles as the first-ever opponent the Longhorns will face at the 10,000-seat Moody Center. Tickets to the game sold out roughly 24 hours after they were released, and it appears that Texas fans are ready to show up for the team this year.
“I think we’ve sold out every game,” Elliott said. “Vanderbilt might be the only one that has a couple hundred seats left. But it went like wildfire this year, so we’re super excited about that.”
Southeastern Conference play for the Longhorns begins against Vanderbilt at home on Sept. 24. The conference has adopted two major changes this season, including a single-round-robin format for the 2025 season, meaning that each team will face every other member one time before the first SEC tournament since 2005.
The tournament, set to take place in Savannah, Georgia, from Nov. 21 to Nov. 25, will likely reveal which SEC teams deserve spots in the NCAA tournament. Five of the conference’s programs earned places in the AVCA preseason top 25 rankings: Texas, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Florida and Missouri.
Competition within the conference is stiff, but this year’s Texas team has added a few key weapons through the transfer portal this offseason.
With the addition of Pittsburgh junior transfer outside hitter Torrey Stafford and Indiana junior transfer libero Ramsey Gary, Texas aims to rebuild and fill key spots that last year’s senior class left. Stafford helped her team reach the NCAA tournament semifinals last year, so she has experience on the stage that the Longhorns are trying to reach this year.
“She has the ability to light up a room,” Elliott said. “She was the most efficient outside hitter in the country last year, so she brings a lot of key components which this team needs with these young players.”
The gap left by key players in 2024, such as outside hitter Madisen Skinner, opposite hitter Reagan Rutherford and outside hitter Jenna Wenaas, cannot be ignored. But Texas also features a talented group of returners with players like setter Ella Swindle, who earned the starting spot back following Averi Carlson’s transfer to SMU during the offseason, libero Emma Halter and outside hitter Kenna Miller. Time will reveal how much they are able to impact the program this season.
Although there have been major shifts in the roster, Elliott remains at the helm for the 24th year, winning three national championships during his tenure.
With a month until conference play, a lot could be revealed about this year’s Texas squad in the near future. Establishing cohesiveness among the new group will be crucial, and the Longhorns have a lot to prove in their 23-game regular season.
