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.

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.

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.