Skinner, Volleyball Cats Preparing for Another Big Season
The Kentucky volleyball team finished the 2025 season as national runner-up, falling just short of claiming UK’s second NCAA championship. However, nearly every player from last season’s team is back for 2026 and the Cats are hoping for another tournament run in December.
On Wednesday, UK head coach Craig Skinner met the media to discuss this year’s Cats.
“The competition in the gym is really good,” Skinner said. “We’ll need that, we’ll need our depth. There’s an amazing amount of really good teams this year around the country.”
Kentucky will face a couple of those teams the opening weekend of the season in the AVCA First Serve event in Milwaukee. UK will open against Wisconsin, a team the Cats beat in the Final Four last season, before facing another of last year’s Final Four teams, Pittsburgh, in the second match of the weekend. Skinner knows his team will need to be prepared for what figure to be two highly-ranked opponents.
“We’re going to really have to be prepared to play against some of the teams we are going to be playing the next few weeks,” he said.
Despite losing only one player, Eva Hudson, a national player of the year finalist, Skinner knows that this year’s Cats will be a different team than last year’s squad.
“Every year is a brand new team,” Skinner said. “While we only lost one player that started for us last year, it’s still a completely new group of people who have to learn how to follow and lead and perform under pressure.”
As fall practice has gotten underway, Skinner already sees some differences in this year’s roster.
“I think that we’re very physical,” Skinner said. “All the returning players are jumping higher, more physical than they were last year. So, I think knowing that, I think we have a chance to be better defensively, blocking and floor defense and limit what some teams can do offensively against us.”
While the Cats made the national championship match, Skinner knows there’s always room for improvement. He’s hoping to get more production from one particular position.
“I think our middle production needs to be a little bit better, to balance out some of the kills that we lost,” Skinner said. “We really played unorthodox last year. So, we just have to find the pieces that make this team compete at the highest level.”
The Cats have four players on the AVCA National Player of the Year Watch List for 2026. Brooklyn DeLeye, Morgan Gaerte, Kassie O’Brien and Molly Tuozzo were named to that exclusive group, giving Kentucky more players on that list than any school in the country. Skinner knows that means a lot for those players individually, but also to the UK program.
“I think it’s a sign of respect for them, individually, how talented they are,” Skinner said. “It’s a sign of respect for our program, when you are expected to perform at the highest level against the best teams in the country, theoretically, you’re going to have good players.”
Coming off a national finalist season in 2025, Skinner and the Cats are preparing to have another big year in 2026.
