FIRST SERVE
Illinois volleyball begins its 52nd season on Friday with a match against South Dakota State. First serve is slated for 1 p.m.
The Illini will finish the weekend in Nashville with the inaugural Broadway Block Party, a six-team event hosted at Bridgestone Arena. Illinois will play the final match of the tripleheader on Sunday at 5 p.m. CT against Vanderbilt.
OPPONENT SCOUT
South Dakota State went an impressive 27-3 last season with a 15-1 record in Summit League action. The Jackrabbits earned an at-large selection into the 2024 NCAA Tournament but fell to Miami in the opening round. AVCA All American Sylvie Zgonc returns for her junior campaign with SDSU. The 2024 Summit League Player of the Year finished the season with 3.37 kills per set, ranking 29th in the country, and averaged 11.51 attacks per set, which ranked 26th. Zgonc posted 494 kills as a sophomore, good for third in a single season at SDSU during the current scoring era.
Vanderbilt begins its inaugural season in 2025. The Illini will be the third-ever match for the Commodores, who began their 2025 campaign at the AVCA First Serve event in Lincoln, Neb. Facing a nationally ranked Kansas team in its first-ever match, Vanderbilt pushed the No. 14 Jayhawks to five sets but ultimately fell short. Vanderbilt battles Belmont on Friday for the team's home opener.
First-time head coach Anders Nelson leads the charge for Vanderbilt. Nelson was on staff at Kentucky prior to his arrival in Nashville in 2022. With a young squad, the Commodores boast 10 freshmen and 12 underclassmen overall.
FINE NINE
The Illinois volleyball team added nine newcomers for the 2025 season. Auburn Tomkinson, Taryn Kirsch, Devin Dzienny, Gabriella Pitcel, Kenna Phelan, Sophi Randall, Alyssa Aguayo, Ava Wysocki, and Lara Žigic all joined the roster during the offseason. Tomkinson and Phelan have previous collegiate experience, having played the last two seasons at Texas and Florida State, respectively. Dzienny was an early enrollee at Florida before making her way to Champaign.
SOUND THE ALARM
Kayla Burbage announced in January that she would be returning for the 2025 season. The Swiss-Army knife of the Illini squad, Burbage played two seasons with the Illini before missing the 2024 campaign due to injury. A transfer from Missouri, Burbage saw time as an opposite in all 30 matches for Illinois in 2022, averaging 2.28 kills and 0.60 blocks per set. The following year, Burbage posted 2.10 kills and 0.47 blocks per set while playing on both pins.
OH, CANADA
Redshirt sophomore Taylor de Boer represented her home country of Canada at both the U23 NORCECA Pan American Cup and the Senior Pan American Cup in Mexico over the summer.
De Boer and Canada claimed the silver medal at the U23 NORCECA Pan American Cup. The U23 Canadian team, making its first-ever appearance in the Women's U23 Pan American Cup final, fell to the United States in the final. The team's second-place finish was Canada's best ever in the competition, and it also served as the squad's first-ever medal.
NEW FACES IN NEW PLACES
This past offseason, the Fighting Illini saw changes to head coach Chris Tamas's staff. Meredith Schamun and Hannah Hashbarger joined the team as the associate head coach and director of operations, respectively.
Schamun joins the Fighting Illini following a four-year head coaching stint at Penn. Most recently, she guided the Quakers to a successful 13-10 campaign with an 7-7 Ivy League record in 2024. The season included the Quakers' first win over rival Princeton since 2015 and their first victory over Brown since 2019. Following the season, a pair of Schamun's players received honorable mention All-Ivy recognition.
Schamun came to Penn from Villanova, where she helped the Wildcats to a 39-23 record in two seasons as the assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. Schamun assisted Villanova to a pair of Big East Tournament appearances and a combined 23-13 record in league play. In 2019, the Wildcats were 22-9 overall and 13-5 in the Big East. That year, she guided the Wildcat offense which finished second in the league in hitting percentage and trained Villanova's all-time assist leader.
Prior to arriving at Villanova, Schamun spent two seasons at Tulane as an assistant coach, helping the Green Wave to the highest RPI jump in the nation (157 spots) in 2016. Tulane had its first winning season in three years and finished fifth in the American Athletic Conference with Schamun on the sideline.
From 2014-15, Schamun was the director of volleyball operations at UCF, helping organize travel, scheduling, and recruiting for the Knights, who won the conference title and reached the NCAA Championship field in 2014.
A highly decorated setter at Rice University, Schamun was a four-year starter for the Owls. The Conference USA Setter of the Year in 2009, Schamun was a Conference USA Championship MVP, two-time All-C-USA First Team, AVCA All-Region, and AVCA All-America honorable mention selection. She helped lead the Owls to a conference championship and two NCAA Championship berths, and finished her career as Rice's all-time leader in assists with 5,190.
Hashbarger comes to Illinois following two seasons on the Regis volleyball staff, serving as the director of operations and engagement. As the program's director of operations and engagement, Hashbarger combined her expertise in brand marketing, leadership, and program management to support the team's success.
LOOKING BACK AT 2024
The Fighting Illini saw much success during the 2024 season, owning an 18-13 overall record and a 10-10 mark in Big Ten play. The team made its return to the NCAA Tournament, falling to Northern Iowa, 3-1, in the opening round.
A key loss from last year's squad is Raina Terry, who earned AVCA All-American status at the conclusion of the season. The program's all-time leader in kills, points, and aces, Terry earned AVCA Third Team distinction, the first of its kind for the Ohio native. Terry was drafted 11th overall to the Columbus Fury, becoming the first Illini player to be selected in the Pro Volleyball Federation draft.
Not to be outshined, Ashlyn Philpot returns to the Illini following a stellar freshman campaign in 2024. The middle blocker was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team at the conclusion of the regular season. Starting all 31 matches last year, Philpot was a bright spot in the Orange and Blue lineup every time she stepped on the floor. In her first match at Huff Hall, the North Carolina native tallied a double-double, amassing 11 kills and 10 blocks. The last time a middle blocker achieved such a feat was Kennedy Collins in 2021. The last freshman middle to post such numbers was Illini All-American Ali Bastianelli in 2015.
Philpot tallied 10+ kills in four Big Ten matches in her debut season, including 17 kills in a five-set triumph over No. 20 USC. The following night, she recorded 11 kills while hitting .667 against Ohio State. Such marks accompanied with nine roofs on the weekend helped Philpot earn her first-ever Big Ten Freshman of the Week honor.
AS SEEN ON TV
The Illini will be featured on national television nine times this season. The team's road matches at Purdue, Wisconsin, and Minnesota will air on Big Ten Network. The Orange and Blue's home clashes against Iowa State and Penn State will also be shown on BTN. Contests at Nebraska and UCLA will be shown on FS1, while the inaugural Broadway Block Party match against Vanderbilt will air on SEC Network. Illinois will battle Louisville on the road on ESPN2.
IT'S A [BLOCK] PARTY
The Fighting Illini will face off against Vanderbilt at the Broadway Block Party in Nashville this year. The match at Bridgestone Arena will be the third-ever clash for the Commodores.
Illinois and Vanderbilt will play in the third match of a tripleheader on Sunday. Nebraska and Kentucky will square off in the first match of the day before Purdue and Tennessee battle in the day's second contest.
HEAD COACH CHRIS TAMAS AT THE HELM
Chris Tamas enters his ninth season as head coach of the Fighting Illini volleyball program in 2025 after being named to the position in February 2017. Tamas (pronounced Thomas) is the eighth head coach in Illinois history.
In his time with the program, Tamas has made an impressive impact on Illinois volleyball and owns an overall record of 149-94 (.613), including a 90-68 (.560) mark in the nation's toughest volleyball league, the Big Ten Conference, as well as five NCAA Tournament appearances, including three NCAA Regional appearances and a trip to the Final Four in 2018. Tamas earned his 100th career win – with all 100 coming at the helm of the Illini program – after leading Illinois to its third trip to the Sweet 16 in five seasons after back-to-back wins to open the 2021 NCAA tournament, including a four-set win over 2020-21 national champion and No. 7 seed Kentucky in Lexington. The Illini finished the 2021 season ranked No. 16 in the AVCA Division I Coaches Top 25 Poll with a 22-12 overall record and finished seventh with a 12-8 mark in the Big Ten Conference.
Illinois experienced one of its most successful seasons ever in 2018 under Tamas, who was subsequently named AVCA Northeast Region Coach of the Year. The Illini made the program's fourth-ever appearance in the NCAA National Semifinals as the No. 3 overall seed in the tournament, riding a 17-match win streak into the Final Four and ending the season ranked No. 3 in the AVCA Coaches Poll.
The team registered a 32-4 overall record and finished in second place in the Big Ten Conference with a 17-3 mark, with the 32 victories ranking tied for fourth-most in school history. Under Tamas' leadership, the Illini collected a number of individual honors, highlighted by AVCA AllAmerica First Team selections in Jordyn Poulter and Jacqueline Quade – the first time in program history Illinois had multiple first-team honorees in a season – as well as a Third Team selection in Ali Bastianelli. Poulter and Bastianelli, who also garnered All-America Third Team honors in 2017, were also named Senior CLASS Award finalists and CoSIDA Academic All-District honorees. The trio also collected unanimous All-Big Ten First Team accolades, with junior Ashlyn Fleming named to the second team and Poulter garnering the Illini's first-ever Big Ten Conference Co-Setter of the Year honor.
