CEDAR CITY, Utah - The Southern Utah women's volleyball team will open their 2021 fall season this weekend at the dōTerra Classic hosted by BYU on August 27 and 28 in the Smith Fieldhouse.
Last Season In T-Bird Volleyball
The Thunderbirds finished their 2021 spring season with a 9-8 overall record, giving them the highest winning percentage in program history (.529). It was just the second time that the Thunderbirds finished a season with a winning record with the only other time coming in 2010 when they finished 16-15 and the first time that they finished Big Sky play with a winning record since joining the conference in 2012.
The T-Birds also won their first Big Sky Conference Championship Tournament game in program history, upsetting No.3-seeded Montana State in the first round.
Stacey Hone earned Big Sky All-Conference Second Team honors and became just the second Thunderbird to ever be named to a BSC All-Conference team in back-to-back seasons. She finished the regular season eighth in the Big Sky in points, averaging 3.45 per set for a total of 183 points. She was also second on the team in kills per set, averaging 2.75 per set and a total of 146 kills.
Sixteen Thunderbirds earned 2021 Big Sky All-Academic honors and the entire team earned the USMC/AVCA Team Academic Award.
New Era of Leadership
On August 5, Director of Athletics Debbie Corum announced the hiring of Kacey Nady as the next head volleyball coach at Southern Utah. Nady comes to Cedar City from the University of San Francisco where she had been an assistant coach for the Dons since the 2019-20 season.
Nady played indoor volleyball for the Oregon Ducks from 2013-16 where she was named all-Pac-12 Conference Honorable Mention three times and helped the Ducks to the NCAA Tournament in all four of her years with the team – including an NCAA Sweet 16 appearance in 2014. She finished her indoor career among the Ducks' top-five all-time in hitting percentage (.315).
Donovan Martinez also joined the program in August as an assistant coach for Nady. Martinez was the faculty advisor for the boys volleyball program and head coach of the sophomore girls volleyball program at Snow Canyon High School in St. George. The boys volleyball program at Snow Canyon consists of athletes from seven different high schools and under Martinez's leadership, they have won four gold medals and two silver medals in various AAU tournaments. Martinez was also named a recipient of the 2020 AVCA Diversity Award.
dōTerra Classic Tournament Preview
The 2021 dōTerra Classic will consist of four teams (No. 15 BYU, UNLV, Long Island University, and Southern Utah) competing in round-robin play in the Smith Fieldhouse on the campus of BYU. Each team will play every other team in the tournament once over the course of two days: Friday August 27 and Saturday August 28.
The host Cougars open the season as the No. 15 ranked team in the country after ending the 2020-21 spring season with a record of 17-2. They were the No. 16 seed in the 2020 NCAA Volleyball Tournament, but fell in the Sweet Sixteen to Wisconsin. Kennedy Eschenberg, Whitney Bower, and Taylen Ballard-Nixon were all named AVCA All-Americans and head coach Heather Olmstead was named AVCA Pacific South Region Coach of the Year.
UNLV won the Mountain West in the spring with a clean 12-0 record during the regular season. Their only loss of the season came in the second round of the NCAA Tournament to No. 2-seeded Kentucky. The Rebels were picked to win the Mountain West once again in the 2021 preseason poll, earning eight of the eleven first place votes from the conference's head coaches.
LIU also competed in the 2020 NCAA Tournament after being named the winner of the Northeast Conference's Women's Volleyball Championship. They finished the regular season 8-5 and fell to No. 18-seeded Pittsburgh in the big dance. The Sharks were picked to finish second in the 2021 edition of the NEC Volleyball Preseason Poll.
Tournament Information
The Thunderbirds will open play in the dōTerra Classic on Friday August 27 at 12:00 p.m. against No. 15 BYU. Their next two games will be on Saturday August 28 starting with a match against UNLV 10:00 a.m. Their final match of the weekend will be at 4:00 p.m. against Long Island.
Southern Utah's match against the Cougars will be broadcast live on BYUtv and the BYUtv app. Their other two matches against UNLV and LIU will be broadcast on the BYUtv app only.
Live stats for all matches can be found at byucougars.com.
Follow Us
Stay up to date during the 2021 Thunderbird Volleyball season by following @SUUVolleyball on Twitter and Instagram and liking the Southern Utah Volleyball page on Facebook.
