Volleyball Cats Setting Lofty Goals for 2025
The Kentucky volleyball team was picked to win the Southeastern Conference title last week, which, if it happens, would be a ninth straight SEC championship. While that remains one of the goals for the 2025 Cats, they have their sights set on even bigger prizes.
Kentucky won the SEC’s only national volleyball championship in 2020. This year’s UK squad, with returning standouts like Brooklyn DeLeye and Molly Tuozzo, is openly talking about bringing a second title back to Lexington.
“I think it’s a hard thing to do but we’re ready to do it this year,” Tuozzo said on Tuesday. “We’ve already put in so much work and we had the great opportunity to get all of our transfers and freshman here in the spring and we used that time to grow closer to each other and play for each other. We are all so bought into each other and the team that it’s a super exciting year for us. I think we’re not done yet and we just want to keep getting closer and eventually a national championship.”
Sophomore Asia Thigpen said that the Cats don’t regularly talk about a national championship, but it shows in how they practice.
“We don’t talk a lot about winning a national championship,” Thigpen said. “It’s all kind of an underlying goal that we have, so we all go to the gym and we’re all practicing and competing our best to win a national championship.”
Thigpen noted that the Cats are hoping to win multiple titles this season.
“Our expectation this season is to win the SEC championship, both the tournament and the (regular season),” she said. “So, I think you check that off and we want to go for a national championship.”
Thigpen said that last year’s UK team took a lot from former Kentucky All-American Madison Lilley, who led the Cats to that national title in 2020.
“Mads talked to us about what that looked like in practices,” Thigpen said. “She talked about how every day, it was just competing. She stressed the importance of winning every single drill and then everyone’s roles are super important, whether you’re on the blue side or the white side.”
Marquette transfer Molly Berezowitz, the sister of former Cat Maddie Berezowitz, knows that everything will not be perfect. However, she believes that how the team handles adversity will be key.
“We just want to go further this year,” Berezowitz said. “It’s not going to go perfect. There’s going to be setbacks for sure, but how can we come back from that and have that goal in mind, that we want to win the national championship.”
UK head coach Craig Skinner even took a potential national championship run into consideration when he put together the 2025 schedule.
“The decision was, do we schedule tough because we know we have some great players and have a chance to end the year competing for a national championship,” Skinner said. “It is what we typically do, maybe even a little bit tougher, all four of the Final Four teams from last year are on our schedule. But I do not feel like we will get to where we want go if we don’t play these teams.”
The Cats all agree that the pieces are in place to win multiple titles in 2025. And no one is shying away from talking about adding a second national title for UK.
