Seeing Red
Previewing the Alabama and Arkansas matches for Texas volleyball
We are now a short five weeks away from the start of the 2025 Texas Longhorns volleyball season. The heat of the summer means that most Texas fans are likely knee deep in jonesing for ANY news about ANY of the athletics programs on campus. Football is on a bit of a recruiting heater (suck it, Georgia). Fall camp is about to start. We’re in the midst of absolutely-god-damn-nothing-meaningful-is-happening-but-we-will-force-a-storyline-about-it-anyway season for the media.
The team has also been busy with national team duties this summer. As shown above, Texas had representation from four players as part of the Team USA U21 training camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, CO. All but Taylor Harvey have joined Team USA’s U21 squad for the Pan American Cup, sweeping their way past Canada, Puerto Rico, and Chile to the semifinal round which begins tomorrow. Setter Ella Swindle and outside hitter Devin Kahahawai are both currently in Anaheim, CA as part of the roster for U23 training camp for Team USA ahead of the U23 edition of the Pan American Cup. Emma Halter is also listed on the roster for the U23 team.
In a bit of self-promotional news, /r/LonghornNation, the unofficial home of Texas athletics on Reddit, is about to start voting on the best plays of the 2024 football season so they can countdown to kickoff. And by “they”, I mean “we”, given that Brittany and I are both moderators. And also I’m the one running that whole voting process and countdown shebang. Humble brag. You should check it out if you wanna be cool or whatever.
Other than the color red, the main thing Texas’ next two opponents share is the fact that they both hail from states that don’t rank in the top five of anything other than alphabetically. And they both lost the last time they played football with the Texas Longhorns.
I’ve been to Alabama exactly once in my life: September 2023 to watch Quinn Ewers manhandle the Tide in Nick Saban’s house. Tuscaloosa (or T-Town, as the locals like to call it) looks like a burned out husk of a town that actually would’ve been improved if General Sherman came back to finish the job on the American Deep South. If it wasn’t for the existence of the Rocket City Trash Pandas, I don’t know that there would be a single redeeming quality about the state overall. Maybe Auburn is nicer? Guess I’ll find out in a few years when I visit the Plains for another football trip to one of the biggest leech states in the country.
Arkansas, on the other hand, is a state where locals desperately try to tell you it is “not that bad” and “actually pretty nice in the northwest”. Very telling that the best parts of Arkansas are all along the path to leaving the state entirely apparently. The kind of place where you can’t tell if the Amber Alert that was just sent out is real or if some toothless, backwoods hick just never made it to his baby mama’s trailer with their kid at the end of his one weekend per month of custody because he trusted Apple Maps with the directions to get him there. At least we found someone giving away chicken sandwiches at the end of that voyage of the damned, huh, Kevin?
Alabama Crimson Tide
Match Date: October 12, 2025
Match Location: Foster Auditorium - Tuscaloosa, AL
2024 Record: 11-16 (3-13, Southeastern)
NCAA Tournament: N/A
Result v Texas: L, 0-3 (16-25, 23-25, 15-25)
Last year’s match with the Tide was far from the most thrilling of the season for the Longhorns. With the schedule adjustment due to the return of the SEC tournament to end the season and the inclusion of Vanderbilt in the conference, Texas will be making a return trip to Tuscaloosa already in its second year. Honestly, the lasting memory of this match comes down to Alabama’s weird setup they have going for volleyball at Foster Auditorium which frankly feels like the Gregory Gym we have at home. On television, it has the feel of your local recreational center with a basketball court surrounded by an elevated track for people to walk or run laps. Vibes were way off.
Last year’s Crimson Tide were anything but threatening to most members of the conference. Their three wins in SEC play came over fellow cellar-dweller Mississippi State, a messy Georgia team I covered in my last article, and an upset win at home over in-state rival Auburn (who was ranked at the time). The Tide were swept seven times during the 2024 SEC conference slate, in addition to two times in the out-of-conference schedule with losses against Florida State and North Alabama. Woof. These problems are further exacerbated by the loss of setter Kayla Keshock and two seniors on the backrow in Francesca Bertucci and Natalie Repetti. Both of Bama’s primary middle blockers are gone, including rising junior Jordyn Towns to Ole Miss. Pin hitter Paris Thompson exhausted her eligibility in 2024 after being second on the team in kills.
The Tide offense will likely focus on returning star senior pin hitter Sophie Agee. Kaleigh Palmer and Kyla Dunaway will be in a scrap with Towson grad transfer Victoria Barrett for playing time on the left side, and Florida State transfer Maddie Snider figures to slot in on the right for head coach Rashinda Reed. Setter Callie Kieffer played a lot in 2024 and should be getting handed the keys to the offense this year. On the back line, Alabama brings in grad transfer Trinity Stanger from Pepperdine to compete with Lindsey Brown and Lily Hopkins for the libero jersey, though all three will likely play plenty, especially after Brown established herself as a solid option from the service line in 2024.
With the amount of roster turnover the Tide have seen, it’s fair to expect another challenging year in the shadow of Bryant-Denny. SEC coaches seem to be anticipating the same, having voted Alabama as the last place team in the 2025 preseason poll and not including a single Bama player on the preseason All-SEC team. Even if Texas is “off” for this match, it’s hard at this juncture to see it going more than four sets, though it’s far from unreasonable to consider this a “must-sweep” just for the fanbase’s sanity.
Arkansas Razorbacks
Match Date: October 17, 2025
Match Location: Gregory Gymnasium - Austin, TX
2024 Record: 16-12 (6-10, Southeastern)
NCAA Tournament: N/A
Result v Texas: L, 0-3 (20-25, 17-25, 22-25)
Arkansas’ 2024 season had a lot in common with the Georgia Bulldogs. Outside of a win in Norman over OU (sucks), they didn’t really jump up and beat anyone that they weren’t supposed to, nor did they drop games to teams they shouldn’t have. For a fanbase, this has to be one of the most frustrating spots to find a team in. They weren’t good, but they weren’t bad either. They were simply forgettable and unremarkable. That middle point often makes it difficult for fans to see the team’s direction with any positive spin, especially in Arkansas’ case where 2024 followed a run of three consecutive years of 20+ wins including a 28-6 record in 2023.
The Hogs will need to replace the production of star outside hitter Aniya Madkin, who hit the portal and headed on down to Florida to play for the Gators this year following an SEC All-Freshman Team debut in Fayetteville. Similarly, Olivia Ruy also chose to evacuate the dancefloor and head to Maryland via the portal rather than return to Arkansas despite being third on the team in kills last season. Setter Hannah Hogue finished her senior year in 2024, so she will also not be back to run the offense for the Razorbacks. The starting libero for the Hogs, Courtney Jackson, was also a senior last season, so she will not be able to anchor the back row for Arky. Both Hogue and Jackson will, however, be able to contribute to the Razorbacks volleyball team from the sidelines as both have joined head coach Jason Watson’s staff as an assistant coach and graduate assistant, respectively.
Not all is lost for Arkansas in 2025, however. Zoi Evans returns as the featured middle blocker after leading the team in blocks and delivering more than 100 kills while having the best hitting percentage of Hogs regularly featured in the offense. I would expect her to be the focal point of the offense this year as a result. Two transfer portal adds, Livia Niu and Kiki Remensperger of South Florida and Boise State, respectively, will battle it out to take over the setting duties from Hogue. Kylie Weeks figures to step into the libero role with Florida transfer Gaby Cornier and sophomore Ava Roth competing for the primary defensive specialist floor time.
The Horns defeated the Hogs in a sweep last season in Gregory Gym as the cap on a stretch of five consecutive sweep victories for Texas, including sweep wins away from home against very strong Florida and Kentucky teams. This match in mid-October of 2024 may have represented the high point of the season for Texas’ confidence as the nightmare home stretch against A&M, Mizzou, and Oklahoma would be starting less than a week later. We even got a memorable moment from Madi Skinner with her dropping a bomb that a Razorback got to catch face-first. With the 2025 match happening just past a year to the day after last season’s, the hope is that Texas will be in a much better spot to manage their confidence and momentum.