Before the year comes to an end, I wanted to share some parting thoughts on the 2024 Stanford women’s volleyball season. The Cardinal finished the season 28-5 overall, reaching the Elite Eight (Regional Final) of the NCAA tournament for the third straight season. This time, falling to Louisville in four sets on the road.

For Stanford, this was overall a strong season. Any time you get to the Elite Eight of your sport, no matter how you slice it, that’s a strong season. What made this year’s run to the Elite Eight all the more impressive for Stanford was they did it after losing a lot of key pieces from a season ago. After losing Kendall Kipp, Caitie Baird, and McKenna Vicini, it was fair to wonder how deep of a run Stanford would make in 2024. They answered that question loud and clear by getting back to the Elite Eight and finishing the season as the number five ranked team in the nation.

Entering 2025, Stanford will be without some key pieces in setter Kami Miner, libero Elena Oglivie, and middle blocker Sami Francis all of whom are graduating. With those three players moving on, others are going to have to step up:

At setter, Taylor Yu will be handling those duties as a sophomore. After what I saw from her this year, I think Stanford is in good hands with her setting.

As for libero, there’s a few different options Stanford could roll with: Anna Pringle as a senior could step into that role as could Koko Kirsch as a junior and Malyssa Cawa as a sophomore. However, incoming freshman Spencer Etzler appears most likely to take over.

Regarding middle blocker, incoming freshman Erika Sayer as well as rising sophomore Lizzy Andrew project to be major factors in the rotation. And then perhaps rising sophomore Sidney Duncan enters the picture. So it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out on that front.

Looking ahead to next season and thinking big picture, Stanford does need to figure out how get over that hump in the Elite Eight. This is a program that expects to compete for national titles and while any season reaching the Elite Eight is a great season in and of itself, when you keep getting stuck and are unable to advance deeper in a tournament, you do want to ask yourself why.

I think if there’s any reason for Stanford to have hope in breaking through with a Final Four run in 2025, it’s going to start with Elia Rubin, Ipar Kurt, and Jordyn Harvey. Those are three fantastic outside hitters. If they make improvements in their game and they are able to get Julia Blyashov going as well, Stanford should be gunning for another deep tournament run. I look forward to seeing how they do.

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