The Louisville Cardinals had their second pre-season warmup event with fans present. This was a scrimmage against “Alumni All-Stars”. The staff got 7 alumnae to return to L&N FCU Arena and strap the knee-pads back on. Of course, some of these haven’t been off the court long, with several playing in pro leagues, several having just finished their eligibility with the Cards in December, and in some cases, both.

On the alumnae side of the net was, Elena Scott of the Indy Ignite, Charitie Luper of the Orlando Valkyries, Aiko Jones of the Atlanta Vibe and Assistant Coach at cross-town Bellarmine, Claire Chaussee of LOVB Madison and Athletes Unlimited, Elle Glock, Jamie Vasilou, and Emily Scott. Coaching the Alumni All-Stars were Anna DeBeer of the Indy Ignite, and Sarah Petkovic - Chief of Staff for Louisville volleyball.

The alumnae team was leavened in few of the sets with a middle hitter/blocker from the varsity squad, Addison Makun taking a set, and Hannah Sherman crossing the net for 2.

This was the first chance the public got to see what will likely be the starting line-up for the Cards as they open the season. Most was pretty much what was expected from earlier looks, both in the spring and in the Red & Black last week. It consisted of: Outside Hitters: Chloe Chicoine and Payton Petersen Setter: Nayelis Cabello Right Side: Kalyssa Blackshear Middle Blockers: Cara Cresse and Hannah Sherman Libero: Kamden Schrand Beyond the official starters, we saw Hannah Kenny playing as a DS in place of right side Blackshear.

The varsity squad took the match 3-1 with substantial wins in the first two sets and the fourth, which was a set to 15. The alumni shook up their lineup quite substantially in the 3rd set, and maintained it in the 4th, shifting Charitie Luper to Libero, letting Elena Scott return to her high school and club playing days of setting, splitting the setting duties with Elle Glock. When Glock was in setting, Scott was over on the left side and had several really impressive swings and at least one block! Similarly out-of-expectation was Vasilou taking swings and blocking, again with some success. Clearly the match was contested in a spirit of fun and joy, as was evidenced by the good natured glare from Aiko Jones when she got convincingly blocked by Hannah Sherman.

Chaussee and Jones led the alumni with 10 kills and 6 kills respectively. Jones also had 5 digs and a pair of aces, which was particularly nice in front of the Bellarmine volleyball squad that was in attendance to support their Assistant Coach.

On the varsity side, Ava Utterback came off the bench to lead the team with 8 kills, with Petersen and Chicoine adding 6. To put some context on those numbers, the varsity squad mostly played reserves, including Utterback, Alanna Bankston, and Chloe Meester, after the first two sets, limiting the opportunities for Petersen and Chicoine.

After the match was over, which was going to be limited to just 3 sets but for intense lobbying, particularly by Elena Scott, to go ahead and play the 4th, the Cards held their “Block Party”. During the Block Party, the players from 2024 were presented their National Finalist rings by the alumnae. Of course, a few of the alumnae themselves were recipients. They did some brief Q&As with alumnae Anna DeBeer and Aiko Jones,, then varsity players Kamden Schrand and Nayelis Cabello, and finally Head Coach Dan Meske. After the agenda, the fans were invited down onto the court to mix and mingle with the alumnae, get their picture taken with the Regional Champion and National Runner-up trophys, and get autographs from the team.

All in all, this was a fun and heartwarming event. To see former player return and play on this court is always a joy. Meske shared two themes for the team, “Us Always”, and “Fun” as a way to describe the culture and identity of this program, and it was certainly on display.

Thanks, as always, to Jared Anderson for the photos in the gallery below.

Over the years that I’ve been a season ticket holder, the first official event on the calendar for Louisville Volleyball has been either an Alumnae match or a Red & Black intra-squad scrimmage. This year, the program decided to do both.

Last night was the Red & Black scrimmage. The teams were seemingly pretty well balanced, with no suggestion that one side was a likely “starter” squad scrimmaging against “reserves”.

There was even a little bit of shuffling of a few players between squads in set breaks. The format was a typical best 3 out of 5 and I suspect some of the shuffling of players may have been designed to tip the scales a little bit to play the full 5 sets.

Regardless of the motivations, the play was exciting and impressive.

The Red squad, originally composed of Alanna Bankston, Nayelis Cabello, Chloe Chicoine, Hannah kenny, Reese Robins, Molly Urban, Addison Makun, and Hannah Sherman, did win 3-2. They were led by Parker Mikesch. The balance of the team, Kalyssa Blackshear, Jessica Drapp, Chloe Meester, Payton Petersen, Kamden Schrand, Ava Utterback, Molly Wilson, and Cara Cresse was led by CC McGraw. The middles, particularly, shifted back and forth between teams quite a bit, but a couple of other players made the cross-over as well.

My impressions, first generally, the defense from this team is going to give a lot of teams nervous breakdowns. Both sides were keeping plays alive in ways that were mind-blowing. There were so many hard shots dug that ended up being absolute dimes to Wilson and Cabello. Blocking, led by an absolute monster Cara Cresse in her final year, is going to be impressive again as well.

For individuals, Nayellis Cabello settled, definitively, who is the primary setter on the squad. Combine her quickness to get to passes that weren’t perfectly placed (there were some) and still give her hitters great positions to swing on, with her solid blocking (5, apparently? We don’t have official stats to confirm this), I think she’s clearly the choice for a 5-1.

However, with the skills of Wilson, who’s placement was amazing, along with a pair of absolutely legitimate 6 rotation outside hitters, and a competitive pair of right sides, the personnel are there for another season of 6-2. We may get a sense next week if Meske goes that route.

I do think Schrand has a good grip on the libero jersey, and it’s evident that she put in quite a bit of work in the off-season to do so. The competition from Urban and Kenny is legit, but at least for the moment, I think Schrand has the upper hand. She’s got a bit of quickness over Urban, and definitely has the 2nd ball contact advantage. Kenny is the queen of 2nd ball contact with her background as a setter, but she still doesn’t handle serve receive quite as well as the others. I do believe her ceiling is astronomical given her overall skillset, so keep an eye on her as she develops at this level.

Chloe Chicoine was every bit as good on the left side as we expected, and Payton Petersen carried the load admirably as well. Both are, as mentioned above, totally legitimate 6 rotation players, leaving Meske with the ability to use his substitutions (15 per set) for other strategic reasons such as the 4 per rotation needed for a double-sub based 6-2 perhaps.

In the middle, Cara Cresse is playing like an absolute monster, though that’s probably not terribly surprising to anyone. Lot’s of eyes were on Addison Makun (Mā-KŪN) as the new freshman, and she played well, but will take some adjustment to get up to the level and speed of play…but not much. Hannah Sherman continues her development and keeps getting better. Her particular strength is on the blocking side, but she is a competent offensive middle as well.

The above commentary has alluded to the right sides, which is the domain of Reese Robins and Kalyssa Blackshear this season. Robins has improved and seemingly toned up a bit, and Blackshear, as a true freshman, is impressively hitting the ground running. If we do go with a 6-2, the two of them will pair well in that system. Otherwise, I think Robins gets the start.

We do have, as has been previously commented on, a long line of players on the left side. As mentioned above Chicoine and Petersen I think are at the front, but I would put Ava Utterback fairly close behind with more legitimate 6 rotation skills, the freshman Chloe Meester looked good but will benefit from some development, and Alanna Bankston has some really great swings at the net along with a great block or two.

Off the court, a couple of shout-outs, Dan Meske looked cool and composed in his first official event at the helm of the program. He addressed the crowd several times during the course of the event and was smooth and comfortable, though to be fair, he mostly fulfilled that role under DBK as well given that she never seemed quite comfortable being the center of attention.

Jerome Pascua was living his best life as the PA announcer. I know, it seems like a weird position to shout-out, but we really are blessed to have a PA announcer in arena who is not just good on the mic, but is also very knowledgeable about the game of volleyball. I don’t think I can count the times when I hear PA announcements at other schools and mentally respond, “Uh, no, that’s not what that call was.” and that basically just doesn’t happen with Pascua. He’s almost single-handedly responsible for getting the Louisville crowd to adopt the “stay standing until our team scores their first point” tradition that, while not uncommon across volleyball, wasn’t something that was done at Louisville until he kick-started it a year or two ago.

All in all, it was a fun evening, it was great to be back at L&N FCU Arena, where the 2024 Finalist banner has been hung.

The next chance to see the Cards in action will be next week, Saturday the 23rd at 2pm. At L&N FCU Arena again, this will be the exhibition against (mostly) Louisville alumnae. Rumors are that we won’t have enough alumnae playing to fill out a full team, so there will be some non-alumnae on the other side of the net. But rumors are that we’ll see Elena Scott, Charitie Luper, and Claire Chaussee. Anna DeBeer will be in attendance, as she was last night, but will not be playing as she got a shot in her ankle intended to help with her continued healing from her ligament tears in the National Semifinals and has to stay off the court for a couple of weeks. Will we see Sarah Petkovic out on the court? There are more than a few of us that would love to see that happen, and at least in my estimation, she seems to still be in playing form.

Though the temperature doesn’t seem like it, fall approaches, so we are starting to see activity coming from the Volleyball program.

The team has started their fall pre-season camp, with snippets reaching social media and fueling position discussions in various fora.

Two solid pieces of information have been shared about positions, but we’re not talking about player positions here, we’re talking about staff.

First, Sarah Petkovic, who has been the Director of Ops for the team for 14 years, and now stretching through three head coaches tenures, has gotten a promotion. While it’s unclear how her day to day job duties will change, she has a new title, and one presumes a raise. It’s also unclear if her day to day duties will change enough to necessitate bringing in a new Director of Ops. Nothing has been announced along those lines, yet at least.

This is a hugely deserved boost for Petkovic. For anyone fortunate to know her, you know she is one of the most kind, caring, and warm-hearted people around. In her official capacity, Directors of Ops are almost universally underappreciated by fanbases, but perhaps Petkovic most of all. She was the only staff person retained from Anne Kordes’ tenure as head coach into Dani Busboom Kelly’s tenue, and now unsurprisingly continues on staff with Dan Meske.

As Director of Ops, she has almost singlehandedless kept the team functioning from a logistics and planning perspective. She has also been a resource for players to lean on in times of need, having her finger on the pulse of what resources are available in what situations.

Congratulations to Sarah Petkovic.

Also on the staffing front. Tori Dilfer Stringer will be joining the staff in the role of “Offensive Coordinator”. In DBK’s tenure, Dan Meske didn’t do much work with setters, given DBK’s extensive background with the role, so he has reached out to Stringer in the past and worked with her to bolster his own understanding and ability to coach the role. So it comes as no surprise that he decided to just bring the source of that knowledge on staff directly.

Stringer has been playing for the Columbus Fury in the Pro Volleyball Federation (recently announced to be taking the name Major League Volleyball), and it is unclear if she will continue in that role. Stringer is currently expecting with a due date in September. Neither her role with UofL Volleyball, nor having a child in September would necessarily prevent her return to the Fury, but I think reasonable people would allow for the possibility that she would consider all of that a bit much and bow out of the PVF/MLV. Free Agency is open right now in the league with many teams announcing many (re)signings, and Stringer has not been among them, but the period is not over, so that’s not conclusive.

Regardless of what she does with PVF/MLV, we welcome her back to Louisville in an official capacity now, and believe she will make a great addition to the staff.

You may know Jared Anderson’s sports photos from sites like Cardinal Couple (where he is also a writer!), Sideline Shutter, and Louisville Sports Report. I’m happy to be able to feature his pics here as well. Most of those sites will use a handful of Jared’s pics to leaven their articles, and I’ll probably do some of the same, but I’m hoping to be able to post bigger galleries (and this post serves as sort of a test of that functionality) to show off more of his work, because it really is excellent.

So here are a bunch of his photos from the Spring Volleyball match against Kentucky at the L&NFCU Arena on April 18th.

It’s been a quiet time here at WideNetCards during the college volleyball off-season. Getting to watch the LOVB and PVF pro leagues to start off the year helped pass the time, as did the very successful Louisville spring season.

Things are about to start getting in gear for the fall 2025 season, however, and to start it off, we had the schedule for the season posted this week. The sidebar “Louisville Volleyball Schedule” page has been updated with the new information. But I wanted to give a bit of commentary on aspects of the schedule here.

First of all, the Volleyball program is bringing back the Alumnae Game! This was a tradition in the past, bringing alumnae back to play against the current team that slipped to the side for the past few years in favor of the “Red and Black Scrimmage” which was intra-squad. It’s always great to see Cardinal greats return to the floor to play and it’s always interesting to see how an all-star team of graduates, without current coaching stacks up against the current varsity squad that has been in active coaching situations. It’s also fun to speculate about who will return to play in various positions on the Alumnae squad.

My thoughts, and this, of course, all depends on no scheduling conflicts: - Anna DeBeer and Claire Chaussee for left sides, with Charitie Luper a possibility as well. - Aiko Jones held down the right side hitting position for so long, it’s hard to come up with anyone else to take the spot. Will she be available with involvement as an assistant coach with Bellarmine now, though? - Similarly, in the middle I would expect to see Amaya Tillman, but her role as assistant coach at Kentucky may conflict. Anna “Stevie” Hall will very likely not play as she will be about 8 months pregnant at the time. Possibilities include Emily Scott, Tess Clark, Maggie DeJong, and Piper Roe. - For setter, Tori Dilfer Stringer is also an unlikely option as she too will be about 8 months pregnant. Wilma Rivera is an option here as she has been playing in PVF and as such is definitely in playing form. - For Libero, you have to assume they will try to get Elena Scott to return. If she is unavailable, I’d love to see Alexis Hamilton back out on the court if she is up for it. - Other alumnae that I’d love to see back out on the court if they’re up for it include Alexa Hendricks…she’d certainly bring some social media attention with her, and Melanie McHenry.

Moving on from the Alumnae match…the official season gets underway with Auburn, Morehead State, and St John’s. Morehead being the first of several in-state matches the Cards have this year. All of these are at home in LNFCU Arena.

Next is the first of four matches at the KFC Yum! Center this season with Illinois. After that, the Cards travel to Fort Worth to play against the always excellent Texas in the Shriners Children’s “Showdown at the Net” special. This is a series of ACC/SEC matchups across the country. Earlier in the evening Pitt will match up against Kentucky, so it should be a great evening in Fort Worth.

Next up is a weekend in Omaha where the Cards will meet Creighton, the hosts, Northern Iowa, and Rice. I believe this is part of a multi-year deal between these teams, and I believe we’re in year 2 of it. A couple of storylines here, with Cardinal Forever Erin Fairs now serving as an assistant coach at Rice, and of course a continuation of the dramatic 2024 storyline of matchups between with UNI and Louisville seeing the matchup of Louisville outside Payton Petersen playing against the UNI squad coached by her mother, Bobbi Petersen.

The Cards close out non-conference play downtown, bringing both Kentucky, and Western Kentucky to play at the KFC Yum! Center. These teams never fail to disappoint when they play against each other. Fans would be remiss to dismiss Western Kentucky as head coach Travis Hudson always seems to have the Hilltoppers firing on all cylinders when they play the Cards.

Then conference play starts, Boston College and Syracuse come to Louisville this year, but then the Cards travel to the west coast for Cal and always competitive Stanford.

The Virginias, Tech and UVA, both come to Louisville followed by SMU, who should never be overlooked, and then one of the premier matches of the season nationally with Pitt coming to LNFCU. Those tickets will be hard to come by if you don’t have season tickets.

Visits to the triangle follow to play Duke and UNC. Then we get the travel partner week where we play Notre Dame, back to back, home and home.

It’s back east to Raleigh and Winston-Salem for NC State and Wake Forest, then home again for Florida State and Miami.

Late November will hopefully be late enough in the year to avoid another LotionGate match against Georgia Tech in O’Keefe, and then of course, a visit to GT’s travel partner Clemson.

And finally, to finish out the season, a pair of high level rematches, with Louisville heading up to Pitt for a match at The Pete, then back home to close it out against visiting Stanford.

This is a good schedule, it’s not as overloaded as our schedule turned out to be last year, but it still has good preparation for the post season, particularly with matches against Pitt, Stanford twice, Kentucky, Texas, WKU, and Illinois.

It’s an exciting time to be a Cards Volleyball fan. I’ll see you there!

The other active pro volleyball league in the US is holding its championship tournement this weekend. The Pro Volleyball Federation, or PVF, has gathered in Las Vegas to crown a champion.

The PVF had eight teams participating in their league this year, and the top four finishers in the regular season standings advanced to the tournament. The semifinals were contested last night (Friday), and the Finals will be held tomorrow (Sunday) at 4pm EDT and aired on CBS Sports.

There are three Louisville rooting interests in the event.

Elena Scott and Anna DeBeer with their Indy Ignite were just barely able to slip into the final fourth seed of the tournament after a late season slide where they lost seven of their last eight matches.

They faced off last night against the top seeded Omaha Supernovas and were able to get the upset in a five set victory: 25-17, 23-25, 23-25, 25-20, 15-13.

I think a couple of stats really tells the tale for our Cardinals. Elena Scott had 11 serve receptions, while DeBeer and her fellow left side hitter Nina Čajić took 25 and 56, respectively. To say that Omaha was afraid of serving Elena is a tremendous understatement, and for good reason, as Scott passed at a 73% positive rate, which is a great mark. Another is Sydney Hilley, the setter for The Ignite, had seven kills on 14 attacks, which is just crazy high for a setter. Overall the Ignite had a really balanced attack. And I’m still upset that Azhani Tealer has me cheering for a former Kentucky Wildcat.

The other match last night saw The Atlanta Vibe, with Aiko Jones, go down to defeat to the Orlando Valkyries. Jones, and the Vibe came on strong at the end of the season. Jones mostly didn’t play in the early part of the season, but once she started getting some playing time, she really shined and became a valuable part of the team. The team as a whole won 13 of their last 14 matches of the season to secure the second seed in the tournament.

And yes, you may have picked up on this. Like LOVB before them, PVF has the lowest seeded teams in the tournament matching up for the championship match. in LOVB it was the five and six seeds as all six teams in the league got to play in their tournament, while PVF is seeing the three seed Orlando vs the four seed Indy in the finals.

You just can’t reasonably say that pro volleyball isn’t interesting to watch here in the states.

There was a lot of volleyball last weekend, and not a small amount this weekend. Lets run it down.

Last weekend, LOVB, one of the professional volleyball leagues in the US held their Finals weekend here in Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center. This was a 5 match schedule of a single elimination tournament involving all six teams in LOVB.

The marketing in the city for the event leaned heavily on the presence of Claire Chaussee and Anna “Stevie” Hall, both of course former Cards players, to appeal to the local crowd. I heard from various folks that this was being looked on by LOVB as an exploration of the local Louisville market for volleyball perhaps with an eye to adding a team here in the future, and the opportunity for Louisvillians to express their desire for this was not passed up. Mayor Craig Greenberg was interviewed during the Sunday session and said directly that we’d like this (while wearing a PGA shirt and then dipping right after, so maybe the strength of that message was diluted a bit). Other Louisvillians that got on the mic during the event also expressed the desire, so now we’ll have to see what LOVB does.

As to the competition, the play was good, although there was some disappointment in the crowd that Madison, the team with Chaussee and Hall, lost in the first round taking all of the local rooting interests out of the competition early. The silver lining is that gave Chaussee and Hall more free time over the weekend to enjoy being in a city that they both look at with strong feelings of affection.

Saturday of last weekend was, however, an off day for LOVB. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t any volleyball going on, however.

The JVA club organization was hosting their ginormous club tournament over the weekend, with something on the order of 130-140 volleyball courts set up and running between the Kentucky Exposition Center and the Kentucky International Convention Center downtown. In the midst of that massive event, the Cardinals held their third match of the spring season. This was a five set battle with Tennessee and largely reinforced some of the observations from previous spring matches.

After the match vs Tennessee was over, I promptly hopped in my car and drove up to Indianapolis for the Indy Ignite match, where Anna DeBeer and Elena Scott are playing. Alas, the Ignite dropped a five set thriller to Grand Rapids, but Scott looked absolutely superhuman in defense, and DeBeer, who hadn’t started the past few matches essentially won the starting role back with some good play in the fifth set.

This weekend is a bit less crowded, but no less important.

I did make the run up to Indianapolis against last night for the Ignite vs The Vegas Thrill, with Charitie Luper. Again, it was a five set affair that saw the visitors barely prevail over the Ignite.

And then tonight, in just a few hours as of this writing, Louisville will be playing host to a first-indications-are-a-very-good Kentucky team in spring play at the L&NFCU Arena. The match starts at 6pm and will apparently be streams on the ACC Network Extra, a first for Louisville spring volleyball. Beyond the normal cheering for the Cards, former Cardinal Amaya Tillman will be on the Kentucky bench as a new assistant coach for the Wildcats.

It should be another great evening of college volleyball, but enjoy because this will be the last we get until mid to late August when we get the build up to the fall season. A little birdie tells me that this year will see the return of the Alumnae Match with former Cards pulling up the kneepads again to show the young whippersnappers how it’s down.

The second of four matches on the spring 2025 schedule was last night in Bloomington Indiana vs IU. The teams announced before the match that they would play at least four sets, and would consider a fifth at game time. They did not end up playing a fifth, after the Cards won all four of the previously planned sets, 25-22, 25-16, 25-21, 25-15.

Indiana has a bit of a thinner spring roster, with only nine players listed (and I’m not sure all of them were even dressed), and I think that contributed to the team just running out of gas by the end of the fourth set and almost certainly contributed to the decision to not play the fifth.

Again, with spring exhibition play, no official stats are released from the match. And again, it will be difficult if not impossible to draw any conclusions from what we saw last night about what our lineup in the fall will be. It’s clear that Coach Meske and the rest of the staff are looking at this spring schedule as an opportunity to put players in a (sometimes widely) varying set of positions and roles and see how they perform.

Perhaps the most extreme form of that was Ava Utterback, who played the third set in the libero jersey, and did quite a good job at it for someone listed as a 6‘0” outside hitter. But then in the fourth set, she doffed the libero jersey (returning it to Kamden Schrand who had it in the first set) and ripped some great swings on the left side as an outside hitter. It’s great to see Utterback getting some reps, and particularly last night as, being from the Indianapolis area, she had a large contingent of friends and family in the stands to see her play.

Also with a large contingent of fans was Molly Urban, again being a native of the Indianapolis metro area. She continued her excellent play from last week, bolstering her resume for wearing the libero jersey in the fall.

The last player that also excelled in front of a larger than typical crowd support was Chloe Chicoine. She hails from Lafayette Indiana, a bit further away than Indianapolis, but Bloomington is still closer than Louisville for her crew. What’s there to say about Chicoine, she just really darn good. She had a bunch of big swings, played solid defense in six rotations, and had a couple of amazing saves to keep points alive.

Nayelis Cabello is definitely loving playing in, mostly, the 5-1 offense with, like last week, several dumps, and quite a few blocks to her credit.

Hannah Kenny quite impressed last night as well. She got a few reps at setter, and impressively for a roughly 5‘7” setter, even got a really great swing on the left side. The spectacular play of the evening for her, however was a pass that pushed her over against the stanchion where she got contact with the ball maybe an inch away from making contact with the stanchion and almost perfectly set for the kill. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ball played from that close to such an obstacle so perfectly. Kenny also just generally impressed with her all around skills. She served aggressively and reliably, passed and dug on defense quite well. All in all, she showed that she has the skills to be able to play anywhere on the court. Alas, she is a bit let down by her 5‘7” height that will certainly relegate her to back row play either as a DS/Libero, or as a setter in a 6-2. The skills, however, remind me of Elena Scott’s play, which is high praise indeed.

Alanna Bankston got some time on the left side and played well. There is, of course, quite traffic jam for playing time on the left, and while I dont’ think she has made enough of a case for a starting role there, she is solidifying confidence in her ability to be ready if her number gets called as a backup.

One last player note, Kalyssa Blackshear was not in attendance last night. I didn’t get any word as the reason, but it could be something as “mundane” as an illness. Here’s hoping for her return next week.

Speaking of next week, the next opponent for the Cards is Tennessee. This match will be played in Freedom Hall as an overall part of the JVA World Championships club event held each year about this time at the Kentucky Exposition Center, colloquially “The Fairgrounds”. There are not tickets for the match itself, but a day pass for the overall JVA event are available at the JVA website for $18.

A few pictures from the event below. Fair warning, these are from me, a thoroughly amateur photographer, and just using my phone camera.

UofL Volleyball is going to have some name duplication this fall. There are going to be three pairs of players that share a common first name.

The team will surely make heavy use of nicknames to distinguish, and I’ll likely make use of some of those nicknames at times as well, so a quick primer on where we are so far with those nicknames.

First, the pair that is already on campus is returning middle Hannah Sherman and incoming freshman Hannah Kenny. Kenny is officially listed as a setter, but don’t be surprised if she plays in a DS or even potentially the libero role by the time fall rolls around. “Sherm” is the nickname that team is using for Hannah Sherman in the middle, and “Kenny” for the smaller setter. Pretty straightforward.

The other two pairs involve a player that hasn’t yet arrived on campus, so how the team sorts out nicknames for them isn’t sure, yet. Look for an update to this post when they get figured out. There’s a reasonable chance that, like the Hannahs, it will just be their last names, or some variant thereof.

The next pair involves the setter graduate transfer coming to us from the University of Washington, Molly Wilson. And that means she’ll be pairing up with junior DS and another candidate for the libero position, particularly after her outstanding performance in the spring match against Vanderbilt, Molly Urban.

The last pairing involves a pair of newcomers. Chloe Chiccoine joins us for her junior year as a high flying outside hitter after two years at Purdue. She will pair with incoming freshman Chloe Meester. Meester is a 6‘3” outside hitter from Mount Vernon, Iowa

The spring season continues this evening with a match at Wilkinson Hall in Bloomington against Indiana University at 6pm.

We haven’t yet done a “Cards in the Pros” rundown here on Wide Net Cards, and with an announcement today, it seems like a fine time to do that.

Let’s start off with alumnae playing outside of the US.

Sofia Maldonado Diaz was, alas, only with the Cards for a single year, playing right side in the fall through the Final Four run. She’s currently playing for CSO Voluntari in Romania. They list her as an outside hitter instead of an opposite, reinforcing what we here in Louisville quickly came to understand, that she can play anywhere on the court.

Raquel Lázaro, who joined the Cards as a setter for two years (2022, and 2023), is playing, as a setter, naturally, for Béziers Angels, in Béziers France, which is very near the Mediterranean coast.

To bring it back to the states, Amber Stivrins played one year with the Cards as a solid backup outside hitter. She’s playing for LOVB Omaha alongside her sister, standout Nebraska Middle Blocker Lauren Stivrins.

Still in LOVB, we get one of our two-for-one deals as we find Claire Chaussee and Anna “Stevie” Hall nee Stevenson playing for LOVB Madison. That’s basically hometown for Chaussee, a native of Sun Prairie which is a suburb/exurb of Madison. LOVB Madison current sits in 3rd place in the LOVB standings, and if I do my math correctly, will clinch a bye for the Playoffs to be held next week at the KFC Yum! Center with another win out of their two matches still to be competed.

Moving over to the PVF league here in the States, we get another two-for-one deal in Indianapolis. The Indy Ignite drafted UofL stars from this fall Anna DeBeer and Elena Scott. DeBeer took some time rehabing her ankle injury from the NCAA SemiFinals, but once she got back into playing form, she has picked up for the Ignite where she left off for the Cards. It took Scott part of the season before she claimed the starting position from Indy native Kylie Murr, but, again, once she did, there’s been no looking back.

Cruising down I-70 east we arrive in Columbus for our last two-for-one deal. Two Cardinal standout setters, Tori Stringer nee Dilfer, and Wilma Rivera are battling it out for the starting setter spot for the Columbus Fury. Columbus had, frankly, a terrible start to the season, losing their first seven matches played. It started looking up a little bit after that, though it’s not exactly a great situation there. Currently in last place, they’re sporting a 5-15 record for the season.

Out west, Charitie Luper is playing for the Vegas Thrill after her year with the Cards. The Thrill is not exactly tearing the league up, but they’re about mid-pack in the league standings, with a record of 8-11.

The San Diego Mojo were set, before the season started, to have Erin Fairs on their squad, but prior to the season starting she decided to hang up the kneepads and begin her career in coaching, getting hired as an Assistant Coach for her hometown Rice Owls.

Lastly in the PVF, we come to the player who’s announcement today spurred this post. Aiko Jones joined the Atlanta Vibe as a right side hitter. Primarly coming off the bench in the early season, she has, in the past handful of matches, dramatically increased her playing time, along with her kills and blocks stats. After her season playing for the Vibe concludes, Jones, it was announced today, will return to Louisville to be an Assistant Coach for the Bellarmine Knights.

I hope you’ll join me in continuing to cheer for these Forever Cards as they play, coach, and otherwise pursue their professional lives.