How Texas Leveraged The Transfer Portal To Become NCAA Volleyball Champions

When the Texas Longhorns women’s volleyball team swept the Louisville Cardinals for the 2022 NCAA championship, there was much chatter about how coach Jerritt Elliott built his squad through the NCAA’s transfer portal. The Longhorns showed the volleyball world how one of the NCAA’s most storied programs benefited from its strategic use of the NCAA’s revamped transfer rules.

“I don’t think Texas wins the championship without the transfer portal,” ESPN and Big Ten Network volleyball analyst Emily Ehman said. “It was so evident the players they brought in, those six transfers, were so essential for this team to have the success that they’ve had.”

Texas was able to revamp its lineup through the transfer portal, transforming its team into the juggernaut volleyball fans witnessed in the NCAA championship. While the focus was on Texas’ seemingly unstoppable offensive attack, Ehman feels they wouldn’t have been there without graduate transfer Zoey Fleck.

“They brought in some of the biggest names in the most important positions,” she said. “Zoey Fleck is one of the best players on that team. You have Logan Eggleston who gets all the recognition, but Fleck is not only the best libero in the country, but I also think she’s probably the second-best player in the entire country. She completely transformed that team. This Texas team in the years past, their biggest downfall has been not having a backcourt defense solid enough to win a national championship. Bringing a player like her in completely reshaped the team to not only be offensively dominant, but also having the defense to back it up.”

Assembling a roster filled with heralded transfers presented a challenging task of managing a variety of egos and desires under championship expectations. So how did Coach Elliott take this group of free agents and not only get them to mesh, but excel in such a short amount of time? Ehman cites multiple factors, including a unified focus on victory that drove the team ahead of personal accomplishments.

“It takes a lot behind the scenes to get that done,” she said. “I think Jerritt Elliott is one of the best recruiters in the entire country. Texas is a big draw in terms of name recognition and NIL opportunities at this point in time, but if you have a bunch of elite players on one team, sometimes that can cause a lot of issues. You can have All-Americans sitting on the bench at times and that can be difficult in terms of playing time. What do they really want to get out of it? Do they really want a national championship, or do they want to just excel one more year? What we saw from this team and what they constantly preached the whole year was the fact they really did want to win the national championship. They didn’t seem to care about those awards or accolades that followed. The only thing they wanted was to hoist that trophy and I credit Jerritt Elliot for rallying these women together in a short amount of time.”

A Path To Managing The Transfer Portal

With at least another year of players receiving a fifth year of eligibility due to COVID, coaches must account for these transfers when planning their scholarship allocations. Georgia head coach Tom Black saw up close how well Texas’ plan worked when the Longhorns ousted his team from the NCAA tournament in three sets. Black said constructing a roster has mirrored the pro ranks where veteran talent is at a premium.

“It’s a bit of a pro model where you have your money in free agency and in the draft,” Black said. “I think you have to have money for the portal right now, especially until the COVID year flushes out. You can still recruit high schoolers, but you’re not taking as many chances as you would because there are so many kids in the portal. The portal kids are more proven; you can see their stats and their college experience. I think right now, it’s huge to be old and good, like 22-23, because obviously someone 23 playing against an 18-year-old is a massive advantage.”

Black said you will see many graduate transfers looking to play one more year with the hopes of winning an NCAA title, ala Texas’ Madisen Skinner who previously won with Kentucky in 2020. Fitting in these transfers is not a simple process, as coaches are trying to balance an incoming class with seniors returning for potentially a fifth year, as well as considering talent from the portal.

As athletes announce their intent to transfer this offseason, Ehman warned player movement may not necessarily signal a program is in distress.

“We’re seeing so many grad transfers, and a lot of people perceive that maybe there’s a war in the program, or something’s bad with a coach or they don’t gel with the players,” Ehman said. “At the end of the day for these coaches, if that player doesn’t tell them early on they want to commit to the team for another year, they have to go find other players. Athletes might not be making that decision until right when the season is done. In that case, the incoming class is very much already set for a lot of new programs, especially for programs that are the top 20 programs in the country. They already have classes for the next probably three-to-four years they’ve guaranteed scholarships to, and they can’t fit another scholarship in that limit. … They want their college paid for, and they’re not paying $50,000 to play somewhere when they’re going to get that money from another program.”

What will college volleyball look like after the extra COVID year of eligibility expires? Black sees uncertainty ahead, as schools may have intricate NIL issues tied to recruiting to deal with as well.

“Whatever is happening in football and basketball trickles down here slowly, but 5-10 years behind,” Black said. “NIL is super complicated, and what the fallout of all that’s going to be, just nobody knows. We’re kind of going through this market crashing phase, and no one really knows what the next five years are going to look like.”

Despite the challenges coaches are facing managing the influx of available transfers on the market, Black maintains coaching fundamentals remain the same. Coaches who can foster a winning atmosphere while still focusing on growth and development will succeed with both retention and recruitment.

“If you’re developing the kid, you care about them and they feel valued, then people tend to want to stay in that organization as long as they feel like they’re growing and there’s a chance for success,” he said.