The UC Santa Barbara Women’s Volleyball team announced its 2025 schedule on Thursday, July 10.

The Gauchos are set to face a fierce slate of opponents, including four teams with NCAA Tournament appearances – and three of those with wins – in 2024. The team is led by Head Coach Matt Jones, entering his third year at the helm of the program. 

The Gauchos kick off the season up north with back-to-back matches against San Jose State on August 29 and 30. 

The Blue and Gold will stay on the road the following weekend, heading to Los Angeles to play a three-day tournament hosted by USC.

The first matchup on Friday will see the Gauchos face the hosting Trojans followed by matches with Creighton and San Diego scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

The Bluejays are coming off a 2024 NCAA Tournament run where they fell to the eventual National Champion, Penn State, in the Regional Final. 

The Gauchos’ home opener comes against Kansas State in The Thunderdome on September 11 as part of a tournament co-hosted with Cal Poly. The Gauchos will look to continue their success from last year when they swept the Wildcats at the K-State Invitational.

The following day, Santa Barbara will face Vanderbilt, who is entering its first season since the program was discontinued in 1980. Northern Colorado will be the last match to cap off the weekend in The Thunderdome on Saturday. 

Pepperdine will visit shortly thereafter with a match scheduled in Santa Barbara for Tuesday, September 16 in The Thunderdome. 

Non-conference play wraps up with a two-day adventure to Dayton for two matches on September 19 against Illinois State and the hosting Flyers, who achieved an NCAA Regional Tournament appearance last season. The next day sees one match against Wright State before heading back to Santa Barbara.

The Gauchos’ second homestand will consist of their first Big West matchups. Cal State Bakersfield and CSUN come to The Thunderdome on September 26 and 27, respectively.

Headed into October, the Blue and Gold are back on the road to continue conference play. October 3 will have the Gauchos going up against Long Beach State followed by a quick jump down to La Jolla to face UC San Diego on October 4. 

The first installment of the Blue-Green rivalry takes place the Tuesday after with a visit up north to Cal Poly on October 7. The trip continues across the Pacific the following weekend as the Gauchos take on the reigning Big West Champions, Hawai’i, on their home court on October 12.

Cal State Fullerton comes to town on October 17 for the third weekend of Santa Barbara Volleyball at home. The Gauchos face UC Irvine in The Thunderdome the following day as well.
A Thursday trip up north has the Gauchos facing UC Davis on October 23. The Blue and Gold return home on Saturday, October 18 to go up against the Highlanders of UC Riverside.

The Gauchos begin their rematches with Big West opponents heading into November with trips to Northridge and Bakersfield. Santa Barbara will face the Matadors on October 31 and the Roadrunners on November 1.

November continues with a four-match homestand. The Gauchos will first see action against UC San Diego on November 7. They host Long Beach State in The Thunderdome the following day, November 8.

The Mustangs and the Gauchos face off on Thursday, November 13 to wrap up the Blue-Green rivalry at home. Fans can catch Santa Barbara’s final regular-season home match on Friday, November 14 as the Gauchos take on Hawai’i in The Thunderdome. 

The regular season wraps up with road matches against UC Irvine on November 21 followed by Cal State Fullerton on November 22. 

The Blue and Gold will look for a top-six finish in the regular-season conference standings to qualify for the Big West Tournament. The tournament is scheduled for November 26-29 in Long Beach with the winner earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. 

UC Santa Barbara Athletics is excited to announce the Men’s Water Polo and Men’s and Women’s Cross Country schedules later this month.

Season tickets for fall sports will go on sale the week of July 14. Fans can always find the most recent Gaucho news at ucsbgauchos.com.

And Barbara Kendall, boardsailing’s Olympic triple medallist, is the performance coach of the White Caps – the new moniker for the New Zealand women’s water polo team.

Right now, Powrie is in Singapore with the side, who took on Italy in their opening game of the world championships overnight. Kendall, who’s been in Denmark watching her windfoiling daughter Aimee Bright race in the iQFOIL world championships, will join the team this weekend. Shearer is minding the fort at home.

Of the three, only Powrie has played water polo – a brief dabble back in high school. Both Kendall’s daughters played the sport, with the eldest, Samantha, taking up a college scholarship in the US.

But the three women believe they bring a wide-ranging skillset from their sailing days, from travelling the world on little to no funding, to staying calm under pressure and unwavering self-belief.

“It’s the belief that it’s possible, to every day keep working towards your goal and you’ll get there,” Shearer says. “There’s no silver bullet or magic wand.

“The goal right now is to make it to the Los Angeles Olympics, and that would be a huge milestone for this sport. If you’re a sailor, an Olympic medal would be the goal. But for water polo right now, just getting there is our first target.”

These world champs are the start of the White Caps’ mission to make history. No New Zealand water polo team – women or men – has played at an Olympics.

The women came within two goals of qualifying for the Paris Games, but their chances have been boosted for Los Angeles, with the women’s field increased from 10 to 12 nations.

As the New Zealand team’s long-time head coach, Angie Winstanley-Smith, puts it, the expansion could be a game-changer for women’s water polo here.

“We were effectively the 11th-ranked team for Paris. This will hopefully inspire not only our current squad members but also the next generation to keep pushing, keep believing,” she says. These world championships are the first step.

Five-time Olympian Kendall was brought on board by her old sailing teammate Shearer, after offering to help with the White Caps players.

“It was primarily to help the girls in pressure situations, managing their anxiety and nerves, because it was all new to them,” Shearer says.

Once Kendall ended her hugely successful sailing career, the IOC member forged a new vocation empowering athletes.

“It’s about knowing what the level of tension needs to be so you can lift, but not over the top so everyone stays calm and focused,” Kendall says. “It’s about keeping an eye on communications, fatigue, food, sleep, hydration, mindsets, team dynamics and all the wobbles that happen when everyone is under pressure.

“I tell them lots of stories – most of them funny – about my days competing, and I try to keep it real. High-performance sport is so intense, and these girls have dedicated years to this sport, living overseas playing in professional leagues – making around 8000 euros a year – with a dream of maybe making the Olympics one day. It’s a huge sacrifice.

“They get to a certain age and say, ‘Well, is this really worth it?’ And if they can make it to the Olympics, well then, it is worth it.”

Kendall sees it as a privilege that she’s now part of a team sport “where every person counts”.

“In an individual sport like boardsailing, there’s only one of you in the field of play, so the results hang on you. So it’s nice to work with a team of girls who are all on the same mission. I didn’t really have that, there weren’t a lot of girls around.

“It’s also a privilege to be a mentor to these young women and feel they can approach me and talk to me about anything. You do it to make a difference, to influence these girls’ lives for the positive. And I know Jan and Polly feel exactly the same.”

Shearer was the first to join Water Polo NZ in 2021. After 20 years as a mechanical design engineer – and sailor – she switched to sports administration, working as CEO of Snow Sports NZ and serving as chair of Canoe Racing NZ.

“When I came into water polo, the organisation was probably three or four months from going bust. There were some challenging things that needed to be done – a reduction in staff, shutting down contracts, leaving our premises; paring it right back,” she says.

But things looked up when High-Performance Sport NZ (HPSNZ) introduced its Aspirational Fund in 2022 to broaden the sports it invested in, and water polo suddenly received $85,000 a year. “It was a small amount of money but an acknowledgment that water polo could do something. It kickstarted our journey with the women’s team,” Shearer says.

The sport then took the opportunity to employ a young female leader through the HSPNZ residency programme, and Powrie – who’d been operations manager at Canoe Racing NZ – joined the team.

“I was keen to get back into sports admin after the birth of my second daughter,” says Powrie, who also managed Team New Zealand’s crew in the Women’s America’s Cup last year. “I’d heard about the residency programme and thought this role could be a good opportunity to experience and learn from a team sport.

“It’s been interesting to try to apply my experiences of high-performance sport into the water polo context and the complexity of team sports.”

Her experience as a high-performance athlete was what water polo desperately needed, Shearer says.

“When you’ve got a sport that’s quite immature in the performance space, you can’t just drop in a high-performance programme because there’s so much to it. It’s a 10-year journey to build a programme like this.

“We had some athletes playing overseas in college and for European clubs, who’ve been exposed to the high-performance daily training environment. But the rest haven’t.

“We’re never going to have that kind of daily training environment year-round, because we don’t have the pool space in New Zealand; we don’t have the depth of coaches or enough funding. It’s not only difficult to implement, but also to educate and explain when the sport’s never been at that level.

“So bringing in someone like Polly, and then Barbara, has been amazing.”

The White Caps have also benefited from the high-performance knowledge of Dutch men’s Olympian Eelco Uri, who’s in Singapore as the New Zealand team’s assistant coach; and the athletes’ voice leader, Frankie Snell, a Kiwi who played water polo for Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

Head coach Angela Winstanley-Smith was also a British Olympian in London, who played professional water polo in Europe, before moving to New Zealand. She took up the role as the women’s national coach in 2017, and the team has climbed up the world rankings since.

But it’s only in the last four years that she’s been contracted by Water Polo NZ, all while holding down the role of director of sport at Auckland’s Diocesan School for Girls.

“We’ve been so fortunate to have Angie, whose passion is unrelenting, who’s driven and has the commitment and the knowledge of what it takes to be one of the top teams in the world,” Shearer says. “We’ve all worked together to build this programme, but it wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for her.”

In a sport that’s traditionally male-dominated, two women are now at the forefront of Water Polo NZ’s board of directors. Alex Howieson, an experienced corporate and governance leader, is the board chair and her deputy is Megan Thompson, a former White Cap who’s been Winstanley-Smith’s assistant coach.

The White Caps have a blend of experienced players such as captain and goalkeeper Jessica Milicich, who’s been in the squad for nine years, and Morgan McDowall, who was the top goalscorer of the 16 nations at last year’s world championships, as well as newcomers such as Holly Dunn, who is in her first year at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the past few weeks, they played tournaments in Hungary and France before arriving in Singapore. Kendall was with the White Caps at the world championships in Doha last year, where they finished ninth (missing a spot in the quarter-finals after losing to Canada 14-12 cost them a ticket to Paris).

“In Doha, we had big dreams, but we just weren’t good enough,” she says. “We didn’t have the depth that was needed to be firing for a whole game. And now we do. So it’s up to the girls now.”

This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.

For javelin thrower Irena Gillarová, a low point in her career became a moment that altered the course of her life.

The Czech athlete had been training full time, deciding not to pursue higher education to focus on athletics. Yet at the European Athletics Championships, she had not even made it to the final round of competition. I didn’t make it to the finals and I have nothing, so what do I do now? She thought to herself.

As she walked out of the meet, Gillarová ran into Virginia Tech’s track and field coach, who asked her if she wanted to come to the United States to compete for his team.

The answer was an easy yes for Gillarová, fueled by a dream to become an NCAA student-athlete since she was a child.

“I always admired international student-athletes from my country who would decide to go study in the U.S. I always looked up to them,” she said.

At Virginia Tech, the international student-athlete set a school record in her first meet. In her second meet, she broke a 17-year-old Atlantic Coast Conference record.

Yet parts of the student-athlete experience surprised Gillarová. Her coaches would ask her about her grades, checking if she needed tutors and making sure she knew about the academic resources at her disposal. 

“In Czech, we don’t have a system which supports education and sports. It’s a huge difference that decides the rest of your life,” she said. “You have all the resources you need. How the whole system cooperates together is amazing.”

On the field, Gillarová broke school and national records throughout her four years in the U.S. Most notably, she won Virginia Tech’s first NCAA championship in javelin, and she repeated that accomplishment in the final meet of her senior year. She is one of only two Virginia Tech female student-athletes to win at least two national titles. She also graduated with degrees in international relations and religion and culture. 

After graduation, Gillarová returned to the Czech Republic to pursue an Olympic career, an experience made possible by her time as an NCAA student-athlete.

“It made me a professional athlete,” she said. “The resources you have as an athlete at U.S. universities showed me this is how it’s supposed to look like, and what you need to have to be professional.”

Even with competing on the Olympic stage — she finished 19th at the 2020 Olympic Games — Gillarová’s most valued accomplishments are her NCAA national championships.

“To me, they are the most important ones because it’s the moment where your team relies on you, the school supports you,” she said. 

After her athletics career, Gillarová’s gratitude for her U.S. opportunities drove her to create pathways for others to achieve similar experiences. She started an organization, usFutures, to help international athletes become NCAA student-athletes.

“I always tell them, if somebody would ask me if I would get a medal from the Olympics or if I would get education at U.S. universities, I would 100% say I would go with the education and these four years at the U.S. university,” she said. “I’m just trying to pass that experience to others.”

Gillarová has also started an endowment fund to raise money and spend time with children in foster care to encourage them to play sports.

“When other structures let you down, (athletics) gives you friends, it shows you different characters of people which you can be inspired by,” she said.

Additionally, Gillarová began working with the Czech Paralympic Federation on the possibility for international para athletes to become NCAA student-athletes.

Last fall, the NCAA office of inclusion hosted Gillarová at the national office as part of the Global Sports Mentoring Program, which pairs emerging international women leaders with female senior executives at top U.S. sports organizations for an immersive mentorship experience. At the national office, Gillarová focused her time on learning about the possibilities for para athletes to become NCAA student-athletes.   

“If it’s in my ability to help them to get to universities, I’m excited to learn anything I can because I’ve always admired the NCAA,” she said.

After an exceptional collegiate and Olympic career, Gillarová helps others become NCAA student-athletes for one reason: She knows it will change the course of their lives — the same way running into Virginia Tech’s coach at the European Athletics Championships changed hers.

“Sport opened the door for my whole career,” she said. “The majority of things I have in life are thanks to sport.

“Before college athletics, I was a kid which had dreams but didn’t have the tools to accomplish them. After college athletics, I became a person who’s given tools to help others accomplish their dreams.”

DALLAS (SMU) – Outside hitter Christa Wilburn has been added to the 2025 SMU volleyball roster, head coach Sam Erger announced on Friday. Wilburn initially committed to the Mustangs as part of the 2026 freshman class but has reclassified to join the team this fall.

The 6-foot-2 outside hitter was a standout at Dripping Springs High School and Regents School of Austin. As a freshman and sophomore at Regents, she tallied over 500 kills per season, helping her collect First Team All-State and All-District honors in both seasons.

Wilburn transferred to Dripping Springs to finish out her high school career, and in her senior season finished the year with 344 kills and 346 digs, racking up several accolades including, AVCA Girls High School All-Region, Texas Girls Coaches Association (TGCA) 6A All-State Team, TGCA 6A District Newcomer of the Year, while also being selected to the TGCA 6A All-Star Team as an alternate. 

In her club career, Wilburn was a three-time team MVP and a four-time captain for Austin Skyline Juniors.

Wilburn and the Mustangs will begin the 2025 regular season on Aug. 29 in Baton Rouge against LSU.