Alli Stumler Hoping Magical 2021 Continues This Fall
For many people, 2021 will be a year to forget. Then, there’s Kentucky volleyball standout Alli Stumler, who is on the other end of the spectrum. Stumler may be hoping that 2021 will never end.
Consider Stumler’s first eight months of the calendar year. She led the Wildcats to a 24-1 record, a maiden voyage to the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament and the first national championship for any SEC school in volleyball.
Stumler eclipsed 1,000 career kills in the last match of the season and was one of the stars of the Final Four in Omaha. She was also named a first-team All-American by the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
If that was not enough, Stumler, along with some of her teammates and friends, took a trip out west early in the summer after the season had concluded. During the trip, Stumler’s long-time boyfriend Riley Linnehan, proposed (for the record, she said yes).
Stumler’s amazing year included her stellar performance last season, when she led the Cats in kills with 364 while hitting .345. Stumler was especially strong in the NCAA Tournament in Omaha. She had 10 kills against UNLV in the opening round and 17 against Western Kentucky in the Sweet 16. She added 16 kills against Purdue in the Elite Eight and 13 against Washington in the Final Four.
But, as any star player would do, Stumler saved her best match for last. In the national championship against Texas, Stumler was as good as she has ever been. She had 26 kills, one short of her career high, and just two errors on 51 swings. That’s a .471 hitting percentage in the national title match.
With the graduation of national player of the year Madison Lilley, along with All-Americans Gabby Curry and Avery Skinner, Stumler will now be the face of the UK program. She’s ready to assume the role and all that comes with it.
“The famous quote ‘pressure is a privilege’ is something that this senior class is going to cling to a lot,” Stumler said. “We are defending champs, we’ve won the SEC multiple times in a row now and that’s the new standard of Kentucky volleyball. Just realizing that we do have that target on our back, so how you handle that is up to you.”
Stumler admits that being the national champions does add some pressure to the Cats this season but that the team is prepared to handle it.
“I think that is another layer of pressure but we just keep conquering that and that just adds another layer of confidence,” Stumler said. “You just keep doing it over and over and over. We can use that pressure in a great way. Definitely a lot of pressure but we’ll just keep doing what we do. We’ve done a great job handling it so far.”
A big challenge is for everyone involved to realize that this is an entirely new group of Cats, something Stumler emphasized.
“It’s a new team, it’s a new chapter,” Stumler said. “We have to realize that this year’s team is not last year’s team. We’re going to be better at certain things this year than last year and we’re going to have our struggles. Just realizing how to navigate those waters and just know that it’s a new team and we’ve got to figure that out.”
Despite the losses of such huge stars from last year’s squad, the ultimate goal remains the same for Kentucky.
“We’ve reached one peak of the mountain, so now it’s time to go to another mountain,” Stumler said. “What’s our next peak?”
When asked if there’s any way to top last season, Stumler’s answer was simple.
“To do it again,” Stumler said. “That’s what it’s going to take.”
If that happens, Stumler’s magical year will, somehow, get even better.
