Hello and welcome back to our preview of the 2025 Marquette women’s volleyball season! We’ve already talked about the returning players from the 2024 roster already, so if you haven’t read that yet, head over thisaway and knock that out. There’s a lot of valuable context in there — or maybe a lack of context by way of not much to talk about? — that sets us up to talk about the new faces on the roster over here.

Let’s jump right on into it, because we’ve got a pretty big newcomer to the program to start with……

Yep, Marquette has a new head coach this season. Ryan Theis left to take the Florida head coaching job after racking up a 258-87 record with MU and establishing himself as the best and most successful coach in program history. His replacement is Tom Mendoza, who comes to Milwaukee after seven seasons at South Carolina. He posted a record of 47-18 in two seasons at High Point, his first stop as a head coach, before going 106-90 with the Gamecocks. Mendoza took South Carolina to the NCAA tournament four times in his time there, including in 2024, and that was with a 7-9 record in an SEC with five top 25 teams in the final poll of the year. Not only did Marquette pull a guy away from an SEC job with a budget north of $2 million a year, but they also snagged a coach with up close and personal experience at winning in the Big East. Before he went to High Point, Mendoza was an assist for six years at Creighton, and his last three seasons there were the Bluejays’ first three in the Big East.

He’s assigned a tall task: Don’t let the program slip. We’ll have to see what the long arc of history has to say about Tom Mendoza’s time at Marquette, but even if this season is maaaaaybe not up to the standards of the last four or so years of Theis’ run, the every year goal of “this is a tournament capable team” should be within reach, both in 2025 and in the long term.

And now, onto the new players on the roster, most of which Tom Mendoza has actually inherited from Ryan Theis’ recruiting, although I think it’s important to start with someone that Mendoza has definitely brought in……

Marquette announced the addition of two transfers on May 28th, nearly three months after Tom Mendoza was announced as the new head coach. It’s safe to say that these women were brought in specifically because Mendoza saw a need to at least bolster the depth at their positions. In the case of Allie Korba (5’9”, #6, Arlington Heights, Illinois), however, I’m pretty sure that she was brought in to start at setter immediately. Korba was the 2024 MAC Setter of the Year after averaging 9.02 assists per set for Central Michigan. She did this under the guidance of then-CMU assistant and now-Marquette assistant Stef Jankiewicz, and if you want to straight up say that Marquette poached Korba from CMU because Mendoza hired Jankiewicz, knock yourself out, because that is 100% what it looks like. If you can grab a Setter of the Year from another conference for her fourth and final year of eligibility, you do it.

A primary reason why that might have happened? Marquette doesn’t have an experienced setter on the roster otherwise. I told you to go read that look at the returning players! Calli Kenny is the only person returning listed as a setter, and she’s actually listed as a setter/defensive specialist/right side hitter, which is less than encouraging about the chances that she’s going to set for the Golden Eagles. Before Korba came in, MU’s only other option at setter for this fall was freshman Isabela Haggard (5’11”, #3, Lexington, Kentucky), who joined the team for spring semester before Theis took the Florida job. That means that Haggard was Marquette’s setter for their spring matches, so even though Mendoza did not recruit Haggard to Marquette, he’s gotten enough of a look at what she can do to know whether or not she’s ready to go as a freshman this fall. Nothing against her, it just seems like the answer was clearly “hey, let’s give you a chance to settle in” at the very least. Haggard is clearly a heck of an athlete, earning all-state honors three times in Kentucky in high school for volleyball on her way to being ranked #65 in the country by Prep Dig and also winning a state title in the long jump as a freshman. Her triple jump personal record would be good enough for 9th on Marquette’s Division 1 all-time list, so I’m not saying that track & field coach Bert Rogers should work hard at seeing if she wants to compete, but I am saying that he should ask nicely.

I said that Tom Mendoza added two transfers in late May, so we may as well move from Korba to the other Mendoza recruit. That’s Julia Stanev (6’3”, #1, Reggio Emilia, Italy), who comes to Marquette after two seasons at Eastern Illinois. While appearing in 54 matches for the Panthers, she averaged 0.96 blocks per set, and that’s actually a dip down from a 1.04 clip as a freshman in 2023 when EIU qualified for the NCAA tournament. That’s good! She had a rough sophomore season, which caused her hitting percentage to drop from .293 in 2023 to just .209 in 2024. EIU had a rough 2024 as a team, finishing 9-19 overall. Short version: Good freshman year on NCAA tournament team, kind of ugly-ish sophomore year on a team that went 5-13 in the Ohio Valley Conference. If Stanev can play up to the level of her teammates around her, then that bodes pretty well for how she might fit in with a Golden Eagles program that should be setting their sights on a Big East championship.

Stanev will be Marquette’s second most experienced middle in 2025 behind only Hattie Bray, but there’s going to at least be a competition for who gets the #2 MB spot. Morgan Daugherty is returning and has shown flickers of being able to contribute while playing behind Bray and Carsen Murray the past couple of years, and we have to consider the possibility that Keira Schmidt (6’3”, #7, Eagan, Minnesota) might be able to make a case for herself. Schmidt was a spring semester enrollee, so she was able to play for Mendoza in the spring schedule. I don’t know how that may or may not have impacted the decision to go out and bring in Stanev, but MU needed depth anyway because this fall will be Hattie Bray’s last year with the Golden Eagles. Schmidt comes in as the #86 prospect in the country in the 2025 recruiting class, so it’s safe to say that she can do some stuff. Her official team bio isn’t overloaded with information that makes you sit up and take notice, but the Prep Dig scouts are much smarter than me when it comes to volleyball. Is “top 100 prospect” enough to push her into regular playing time this year, or are we going to have to wait til 2026?

Defensive Specialist/Libero

I’m going to save hitter til the end, because figuring out who’s going to play libero for Marquette is kind of a critical question. Adriana Studer is Marquette’s only returning defensive specialist, and without getting into anything resembling criticism, we can point out that she hasn’t been Marquette’s primary libero to this point of her three years with the Golden Eagles. With that being the case, there’s a decent chance that one of the three new defensive specialists could jump Studer in line. Allyson Eckel (5’7”, #2, Kenosha, Wisconsin) shoots to the front of the line in that regard merely by being a transfer that Ryan Theis brought in for the spring semester. With that said, she wasn’t a “we’ve got to play her under all circumstances” player for Middle Tennessee, as she played in just 46 of the Blue Raiders’ 61 matches in her two years there. Eckel averaged 1.59 digs per set across her two seasons of action, but I suspect the “didn’t come close to playing in every set” thing might have created an artificial cap to her average. If you’re not on the floor for the whole set, just subbing in occasionally, it’s hard to stack up digs, y’know? In any case, her 155 sets in two seasons is still more than Studer’s 120 in three seasons, so I guess that makes Eckel Marquette’s most experienced DS heading into the season.

Marquette also has two freshmen in the position group. Avery Helms (5’9”, #24, St. Charles, Missouri) and Annika Kowalski (5’9”, #14, Appleton, Wisconsin) are both “late” additions to the roster, in that they weren’t in the group of freshmen that enrolled back in January. Helms has the probable inside track to immediate playing time after being tabbed as an AVCA Third Team All-American last fall and setting her high school’s records for digs in a season, average digs per set for a season, aces in a season, and career aces. She’s also #2 all-time in Missouri state history in digs for a career, and Ryan Theis praised her defending and passing when she was signed as a recruit back in early January. A good passing libero was important in Theis’ system, but we’ll have to wait and see if that’s as big of a deal with the way Mendoza coaches his team. Kowalski was an all-state selection in 2022 and 2023 while her high school won a pair of Wisconsin Division 2 state titles, but the fact of the matter is that she was an attacker in high school and now she’s listed as a defensive specialist. That probably means she’s a heck of an athlete to be able to earn a Division 1 scholarship with the intent of doing something other than what she excelled at in high school, but it also probably means that she’s still learning and growing at her new position. If she picks it up quick, there’s no one in this position group that’s clearly shooting past her as the obvious starter, but for now, I’d rank her fourth out of four pure DS/L players on the roster.

Marquette has an interesting mix of newcomers at outside hitter where there’s a lot of playing time to be grabbed up with Natalie Ring as the only real proven option coming back from last year’s roster. Mari King (5’10”, #11, Jacksonville, Florida) joined the team as a freshman at the start of the spring semester, so she’s been working with Tom Mendoza and his staff ever since they got to campus. She set Florida’s all-time kills record during her prep career, and at the time she signed back in November, Ryan Theis expected her to “play in some big time matches for us in 2025.” She also seemed to be working through some injury related stuff in the spring semester, turning up with a taped up right thigh for a stretch. It never stopped her from playing, but it’s worth noting that she maybe hasn’t been 100% for the Golden Eagles quite yet.

Elena Radeff (6’0”, #21, Menlo Park, California) comes into Marquette as a transfer signed by Ryan Theis but she didn’t arrive on campus until during the summer to begin preparing for the fall season. 2025 will be Radeff’s only season in Milwaukee, as it is her COVID bonus season of eligibility after redshirting in 2022. She was Santa Clara’s #2 attacker last season, averaging 2.69 kills/set and hitting .266. With that said, she finished 2024 on a hot streak, averaging 4.90 kills and hitting .368 over the Broncos’ final six matches. That’s not just a blip of activity, that’s sustained success where Radeff also chipped in 1.15 digs and 0.85 blocks per set. Radeff also played beach volleyball for Santa Clara and was all-West Coast Conference in 2024 while appearing on SC’s top pairing that season. Even if she’s really somewhere in the middle of 2.69 and 4.90 kills per set, that would seem to indicate that she has a part to play for the Golden Eagles in 2025. Remember: She was signed by Ryan Theis to be at MU for one season, so I think we can draw the conclusion that there was a plan for her to have a quality role.

Emma Parks (6’2”, #10, Meadville, Pennsylvania) rounds out the group as a summer enrolling freshman. She earned all-state honors three times in her prep career, and on her way to 1,933 career kills, she set her high school’s single match record with 47. At the time she signed in January, Ryan Theis was leaning towards Parks redshirting in 2025, partly because she came to volleyball a little bit later than the traditional trajectory that he sees. The outside hitter group that’s on Tom Mendoza’s roster for this fall is the same group that was projected to be here right before Theis took the Florida job, so I’d imagine there’s a chance that Mendoza’s assessment of Parks is similar. With that said, different coaches have different asks for their players, and if Parks fits what Mendoza wants right now better than she was going to fit in for Theis, I say run with it and see what happens.

Follow Anonymous Eagle on social media