At last month’s Digital Sports Summit, Kahlen Macaulay, head of international sports partnerships at Snapchat, shared how sports broadcasters, federations and other rights holders/owners and brands can successfully make use of the platform, particularly to reach younger viewers.

From super-serving their interests and helping them connect with friends and family during sporting events, to capturing authentic images thanks to camera technology that Macualay describes as “the superpower of communication”, Snapchat offers a unique way to engage and grow audiences.

He also spoke about how Snap has moved beyond a platform for video content teams to something that can “drive marketing and affinity”.

“Adidas, Nike and a host of luxury brands understand that it’s not about selling product straightaway, it’s about brand building. Sky Sports, for example, know they aren’t going to get a 15-year-old to take out a subscription, but it’s about building that relationship.”

Watch the video now.

An Olympic medalist and highly decorated Trojan, USC women’s water polo’s Tilly Kearns has collected a significant academic honor to add to her lengthy list of accolades with her selection to the 2024-25 CSC Academic All-America Women’s At-Large Second Team, as announced today by College Sports Communicators (CSC).

Kearns wrapped her USC career as the Trojans’ No. 3 scorer in program history and as a three-time First Team All-American. She joins fellow Olympian Flora Bolonyai as the only other USC women’s water polo player to be named to an Academic All-America Team, with Bolonyai earning First Team honors in 2013.

A three-time First Team All-American, Kearns was selected for USC’s Trojaneer Diamond Award, given to a graduating student-athlete who has brought the most fame and distinction to the university. Dedicated to numerous community outreach projects and extracurricular activities, the Australia native also helped her USC teams reach the NCAA final in all four seasons in which she competed. Since arriving as a freshman at USC in 2018-19, Kearns took some time away from USC in order to train with her Australian National Team in preparation for and in competition at the 2020 and 2024 Olympic Games. In 2024, Kearns was instrumental in the Aussies’ Olympic silver medal before returning to her final season at USC, where she served as a team captain. 

A three-time finalist for the prestigious Peter J. Cutino Award, Kearns also is a four-time ACWPC All-Academic honoree and a three-time MPSF Scholar-Athlete to go along with this season’s All-Big Ten Academic honor. Kearns was joined on the 2025 CSC Academic All-District Team by teammate Isabel Zimmerman before being voted to the CSC Academic All-America Second Team

For this year’s CSC Academic All-America Women’s At-Large Team selections, a total of 46 student-athletes were recognized at the Division I level across many sports: beach volleyball, bowling fencing, field hockey, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, rifle, rowing, skiing and water polo. Sixteen student-athletes were named to the First Team, with 20 on the Second Team and 10 on the Third Team.

 

NORMAN – Oklahoma volleyball outside hitter Alexis Shelton was named to the 2025 Preseason All-SEC Team, the league office announced Tuesday.

A rising senior, Shelton was named to the preseason team after a stellar first year in the conference where she earned first team All-SEC honors.

Shelton had a breakout junior season as she led the team with 455 kills and 4.38 kills/set. She ranked second on the team in digs with 204 and in blocks with 93.

The junior tallied double-digit kills in every meet of the season, including a season-best 27 against Texas. She recorded 20-plus kills on nine occasions and notched eight double-doubles on the year. In the season finale against Pitt, she recorded a career-high 7.0 blocks.

Shelton reached the 1,000-kill mark in 2024, the 15th Sooner to achieve the feat. Her 1,118 career kills are good for 14th all-time. Her 455 kills in 2024, place her second all-time for kills in a single season.

The preseason coaches poll was also announced Tuesday, with the Sooners picked to finish seventh in the league after a sixth-place finish in 2024. Kentucky was predicted to win the 2025 SEC crown, while three schools received first place votes.

For updates, follow @OU_Volleyball on Twitter and Instagram, or like Oklahoma Volleyball on Facebook.

2025 SEC Volleyball Preseason Coaches Poll

1. Kentucky (9) – 218

2. Texas (6) – 216

3. Texas A&M (1) – 195

4. Missouri – 182

5. Florida – 169

6. Tennessee – 149

7. Oklahoma – 143

8. LSU – 115

9. Georgia  – 98

10. Ole Miss – 97

11. Arkansas – 80

12. Vanderbilt – 77

13. Auburn – 76

14. South Carolina – 42

15. Mississippi State – 38

16. Alabama – 25

 

The Syracuse volleyball team is complete, and the 2025 squad has arrived on campus for summer classes and workouts. The Orange welcome 11 newcomers to the 2025 squad which returns seven from last year’s team than went 15-17 overall and 3-17 in the ACC.

“We are very excited about this new group that is coming in because we feel like it’s a good mix of really young and talented players and some athletes coming in with experience previously competing at a high level around the country,” Syracuse head coach Bakeer Ganesharatnam said. “We truly invested a lot of time and effort into this class, not just evaluating them based on how good they are as athletes but even more how good they are as people. We really paid attention to making sure we recruited the right characters.”

Syracuse welcomes five middle blockers in Marisse Turner, Kaliya Ndiaye, Oreva Evivie, Soana Lea’ea and Mari Lawton. Outside hitters Marie Laurio, Elizabeth Turner and Gabriella McLaughlin will help strengthen the Orange attack while SU also adds defensive specialist Reese Teves and Rana Yamada. Additionally, Syracuse added setter Tehya Maeva this offseason, a junior transfer from Nevada by way of San Diego, California.

Marisse Turner is a 6-foot graduate transfer from Long Beach, CA. Turner attended Marymount High School and joins the Orange from California State University – Fullerton where she appeared in 49 sets across 14 matches. Ndiaye is a 6-foot-4 middle blocker from Aliso Viejo, CA. She played at Santa Margarita Catholic where she helped SMHS to a 25-15 record a s a senior.

Evivie is a 6-foot middle blocker from Charlotte, NC, who began her collegiate career at Virginia Tech before spending her final two seasons of undergrad at FGCU where she helped the Eagles to a 27-5 overall record and a 15-1 mark in the Atlantic Sun Conference appearing in all 32 matches as a senior in 2024.

Lea’ea joins the Orange from UC Irvine where she appeared in 114 sets across 41 matches after redshirting the 2022 season. The 6-foot-1 Las Vegas, Nevada native was an All-WCAL Second Team honoree out high school at Saint Francis (CA). Lawton, a 6-foot junior transfer from San Jose State joins the Orange from Mililani, Hawaii, where she won an ILH and state championship as a senior en route to earning All-State recognition. At San Jose State she appeared in 32 matches over her first two seasons totaling 78 kills and 64 blocks.

Laurio is a 5-foot-10 middle blocker from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who earned All-Region and All-State recognition each year from 2022-24. She was named Saline High School’s Most Valuable Player a junior and senior. She’s joined by freshman Elizabeth Turner who hails from Pine Bluff, Arkansas and has spent time in Japan playing for Kizankino Sho Club the last four years. While attending Seiwa Joshi Gakuin High School in Japan, she helped her varsity team finish No. 1 in the Sasebo region in each of her final two seasons and was named the Best Hitter and MVP for the DODEA Pac-East in 2022.

The final middle blocker added for the 2025 season is Nevada transfer Gabriella McLaughlin. The 5-foot-8 senior played three seasons for the Wolfpack where she was named All-Mountain West in 2024. She is a College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honoree in 2023 and led the team in kills (443), kills per set (3.82) and was second in digs with 265 in 2024.

McLaughlin and Maeva will reconnect in Syracuse after having shared the court at Nevada the past two seasons.

Teves is a 5-foot-7 sophomore transfer from Waipahu, Hawaii. She appeared in 25 matches playing in 79 sets at Long Island University in 2024 and tallied 59 digs (0.75 per set) and secured 21 aces with five assists. Joining Teves as a defensive specialist and libero is Yamada, a 5-foot-6 junior from Kanagawa, Japan, who played most recently at Western Arizona.

“We want to build a team that the Syracuse community can see themselves in,” Ganesharatnam added. “We want to be a team that’s truly blue collar, has grit and works hard. We want the relentless pursuit of excellence not just on the court but also in the classroom and in our community. We want to be engaged, and I feel like this group will do that. We want to strengthen our core values and really pursue that.”

The first official practice of the 2025 season is slated for later this month on July 31.

For more on Syracuse volleyball, follow the Orange on social media @CuseVB.

 

The San Diego State water polo team matched the Golden Coast Conference (GCC) high with 18 student-athletes garnering GCC All-Academic Team honors for the 2024-25 school year, the league announced on Tuesday from its offices in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Since SDSU’s inaugural season of water polo, in 1995, it had never earned double digit conference academic honors in five successive campaigns prior to this year. Last season, SDSU set a program-high with 19 honorees. In 2021 and 2023, the Aztecs set and then equaled the previous program-record with 16 conference academic distinctions.

With its haul of 15 honors in 2022 combined with the 11 that were bestowed on the team in 2019, SDSU has for the sixth time in the last seven years taken home double-digit GCC awards for classroom excellence. The 18 honors earned this year equal the most of any team in the GCC.

This marks the fifth consecutive year the Aztecs have taken home double-digit honors, and the 18 Aztecs were among 111 women who were recognized by the GCC for their success in the classroom.

For inclusion, players must be full-time students with at least one year completed at their current institution, have played in more than 50 percent of their team’s games for the season, and hold a minimum of a 3.0 cumulative GPA.

The 18 Aztecs who met the requirements are: seniors Amanda Chambers, Rose Kanemy, Brooke Lee, Sofia Righetti and Luna Sarmiento, juniors Tiaare Ahovelo, Hannah Bell, Sydney Gish, Megan Holcomb, Aiyana Mendoza, Gabrielle Muehring, Shannon Murphy, and Claudia Valdes, sophomores Lucy Bullock, Sammi Byers and Mimi Stoupas, and freshmen Sierra Johnson and Julianne Stark.

These are the fourth GCC academic honors for Chambers, Kanemy, and Lee, while Righetti, Gish, Murphy and Valdes earned the distinction for the third time. Ahovelo, Bullock, Byers and Stoupas are receiving the designation for the second time in their careers and the remaining seven: Bell, Holcomb, Johnson, Mendoza, Muehring, Sarmiento and Stark are first-time honorees.

Since joining the GCC in 2014, San Diego State players have been honored by the conference 136 times for their academic success.

Under the guidance of head coach Dana Ochsner, San Diego State finished the 2025 season ranked No. 22 in the final Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) poll. It compiled a 15-15 record, 4-3 in conference play, and finished in fourth place in the GCC Championship tournament.

2025 Golden Coast Conference All-Academic Honors
San Diego State Honorees
Tiaare Ahovelo (JR, GK)
Hannah Bell (JR, CTR)
Lucy Bullock (SO, DEF)
Sammi Byers (SO, ATT)
Amanda Chambers (SR, ATT)
Sydney Gish (JR, ATT)
Megan Holcomb (JR, UTL)
Sierra Johnson (FR, ATT)
Rose Kanemy (SR, ATT)
Brooke Lee (SR, ATT)
Aiyana Mendoza (JR, UTL)
Gabrielle Muehring (JR, UTL)
Shannon Murphy (JR, ATT)
Sofia Righetti (SR, DEF)
Luna Sarmiento (SR, DEF)
Julianne Stark (FR, ATT)
Mimi Stoupas (SO, CTR)
Claudia Valdes (JR, ATT)

BOCA RATON, Fla. – Florida Atlantic beach volleyball’s Marketa Svozilova was named College Sports Communicators (CSC) Academic All-American Second Team, announced by the CSC on Tuesday.

With the honor, Svozilova becomes the first CSC Academic All-American in program history. She is also one of just five beach volleyball players from the 46 total student-athletes nominated to the three NCAA Division I Academic All-America teams.

Svozilova excelled on the sand and in the classroom, boasting a 3.97 GPA and graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

A native of Brno, Czech Republic, Svozilova produced one of the best seasons in program history, finishing the 2025 campaign with a 26-5 record, which ranked second on the team. She earned AVCA Second Team All-American, AVCA Top Flight, CUSA Pair of the Year, and CUSA All-Conference First Team honors. Alongside Ashleigh Adams, Svozilova had a record-breaking season, tying the program record for single-season pair victories with an incredible 25-5 record, earning all of her wins on court one. Adams and Svozilova opened the season with a program-record-breaking 13-1 record, including a perfect 9-0 season-opening winning streak. The pair was named CUSA Pair of the Week a league-record four consecutive times (Feb. 25, March 4, March 11, March 18).

At the CUSA Championship, the duo was perfect, going 4-0 with three-straight set wins at the No. 1 position against No. 9 seed Jacksonville State, twice against No. 2 seed Tulane, and defeating No. 4 UAB’s top pair in three sets to earn CUSA All-Tournament Team honors.

Individually, Svozilova earned ranked wins in 2025 against No. 3 & No. 4 TCU, including a victory over 2025 national champion TCU’s 2024 Paris Olympian and top pair of Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno, in addition to defeating No. 7 Florida State, No. 10 LSU, No. 13 Texas, No. 13 & No. 20 Georgia State, No. 14 Washington, and No. 17 FIU twice.

The CSC Academic All-America Women’s At-Large teams, selected by College Sports Communicators, recognize the nation’s top student-athletes for their combined performances in competition and in the classroom. To be eligible, a student-athlete must hold a 3.50 cumulative GPA or better, in addition to being a key contributor on the sand.

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For updates, follow @FAUBeachVB on X and Instagram, or like FAU Beach Volleyball on Facebook.