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!

Information about tickets for spring matches is now out.

The first match, on Friday the 28th at Central Hardin High School, will not be a ticketed event (or at most they’ll be handing them out at the door with no advanced options), no cost. The match will be at 7:30, with door opening at 6:30.

The second match, against IU, is April 5th 6pm, in Bloomington at Wilkinson Hall. General admission tickets are available, through IU, for $11. IU single event tickets.

The third match is on April 12th at noon and is a part of the JVA World Challenge event that will be at the Fairgrounds. The UofL match is not ticketed itself, but entry to the JVA event is $18 for a day pass. The match will be played in Freedom Hall, but large numbers of club volleyball matches will be going on as part of the JVA event that the day pass also grants access to. Tickets through JVA

Finally, the Kentucky match at 6pm on Friday April 18th will be at 6pm, and tickets are $15. Those tickets are currently on sale to volleyball season ticket holders for their normal seats. Public sales should start on Wednesday the 26th through UofL’s normal Ticketmaster system.

The volleyball program has announced a minor update for the spring schedule.

The match scheduled for March 28th is being moved. It was previously scheduled to be played at Elizabethtown High School, but will now be played at Central Hardin High School. Etown is in Hardin County, so this isn’t a massive move, just the other side of Etown, and while it’s not exactly a one-stoplight town, it’s not huge either.

The match also now has a start time, 7:30, that I don’t believe had been posted previously.

Volleyball is allowed to play four dates of inter-collegiate competition for a spring schedule. Of course, the competition is exhibition and doesn’t get recorded for any official stats.

Louisville volleyball will take advantage of all four dates of play for the 2025 spring season.

They will start off with a match against Vanderbilt on March 28th. The Commodores will play their first official season of play in fall, so this will be a good warm-up for them. Whitman Czajkowski was listed as “Technical Coordinator/Sports Statistician” for the UofL volleyball squad until the end of the 2024 season. He has taken a role with Vanderbilt’s volleyball program as the Director of Technology and Analytics. This match will be in Elizabethtown, at Elizabethtown High School.

The Cards will continue on the road, with a trip to Bloomington, IN to play Indiana University on April 5th.

Louisville will finish the spring season in Louisville with a match on April 12th at Freedom hall against Tennessee. This is scheduled in conjunction with the JVA Qualifier, a large club volleyball tournament held at the Fairgrounds every year, so expect a large crowd.

And finally, as is tradition, the Cardinals and the Wildcats will tangle once again on April 18th at L&N Federal Credit Union Arena. No announcement yet if there will be tickets for this event, even if they are zero dollar, but I wouldn’t be surprised given the limited seating at LNFCU.