Amidst a warm summer and vibrant green trees that now seem far away, the volleyball team arrived on campus to prepare for their coming season. They arrived on campus mid August with a squad of 23 players, six of them first years. As Torrance Williams ’25 described, preseason was a time for the team to begin to bond and build connections so that they could be in lockstep once the season properly began.
“We had preseason mid August,” she said. “It’s always my favorite time, it’s like tryouts. You get to prove yourself and why you should be on the court. So it’s a very competitive time, but very fun as well. And you get to meet the incoming first years and build those relationships.”
The team kicked off their season with the St. Paul Tournament. They left that weekend with a loss to Carthage College followed by a win over Augustana College (Ill.), both by 3-1 scores.
The St. Norbert College Invitational in early September served as a momentum boost at the beginning of the season; the Scots won all three games there. Through the rest of the pre-conference component of the season, the Scots oscillated between wins and losses, going 5-5 ahead of MIAC play. As Head Coach Mary Johnston shared, the team also saw its versatility tested by a string of injuries.
“We’ve had a number of injuries to a number of different players at different times,” Johnston said. “So often we’ve had people playing positions that they don’t normally play in practice and in matches, and that’s not really an easy thing to just keep doing over and over again. And they’ve really continued to show up and just be for each other and go back to, like our team, core values of being resilient, intentional, supportive and committed.”
Conference play began with a match at Concordia College (Minn.) which saw the Scots winning 3-1, led by 17 kills from first-year standout Ella Cohen-Richie ’28. After that match, though, the volleyball Scots faced a tough stretch, facing three MIAC powerhouses of Bethel University, Gustavus Adolphus College and College of St. Benedict and emerging without a win.
Then came the game against St. Catherine University. Each of the first three sets was decided by two points — the minimum margin. The Scots and Wildcats exchanged blows; Mac took the first and third sets, St. Kate’s fought back with wins in the second and fourth. It all came down to the fifth set. The Scots went down but fought back. They won a point to cut the lead down to 12-13. Hannah Morrow’s ’27 serve on the critical point landed out. The Scots believed that a St. Kate’s player had touched it before it landed, but the referees ruled in the Wildcat’s favor, lending them a match point which they swiftly converted on, ending one of the Scots’ finest games in recent years with an agonizing loss. In the end, St. Kate’s won the game, 15-12 in the final set.
“Time and time again, we’re so close,” Adison Preston ’25 lamented. “We’ve had a lot of five set thrillers. We’ve had even four or three set ones where I’m like ‘we could have won this if one end ball was called out, or, if we decided to block just a little bit more, the ball would have gone down and it would have been the end of the game.’
“And so this season on the court has been somewhat frustrating, outcome wise, but also I’ve never felt more support and connected to the team.”
St. Kate’s delivered the Scot’s their sixth straight loss. Nevertheless, the Scots didn’t let that stop them. For their next game on Oct. 18, the Scots traveled to Northfield to play Carleton College, heads held high.
“A day is a day is a day is a day, so this game is the same as the game was in September, and this match point is the same as the first point,” Johnston said, sharing a core mantra of the team this season. “Every day is just a day. Be in the present and be focused on that day.”
With this mentality locked in and the team ready for a win, the Scots left Carleton with a 3-1 victory. Preston and Avery Rahe ’26 left with 14 kills each and Nicole Norton ’25 led the team with 23 assists. That ability to bounce back points to another key element in the Scot’s mentality for the year: playing for each other and being united in their goals as a team.
“I’m incredibly proud of how we were able to support each other even this past weekend,” Preston said, referring to a later pair of matches on Oct. 26. “Coach [Johnston] wanted to mix up the lineup, and the first thing we did was like, high five each other and like support. And so when we win, then it feels so much like a team win”
The team still has three games left this semester: Hamline University, Augsburg University and St. Mary’s University (Minn.). They must win all three in order to have a practical shot of making it to the playoffs for the first time since the 2000s. While Hamline and St. Mary’s should be wins — they occupy the bottom two rungs of the MIAC standings — fourth-place Augsburg will be the real challenge of the late season.
The Augsburg game will also be senior night, honoring the seven players from the class of 2025 who will graduate in May. These seniors were first-years in the inaugural season of Mary Johnston’s stint as head coach and have since ushered in a new era of renewed competitiveness for this program.
“The seniors started with me … and just to watch them change and grow and become leaders and lead others and have other people follow them and also learn from them, has been really great and awesome to see,” Johnston said.
These games will also potentially see two members of that senior cohort reaching career statistical milestones. Preston is 24 kills from reaching 1,000 in her collegiate career, while Norton is eight assists away from 1,500.
As the team stands right now, their record is 11-14 overall, with a record of 3-5 within the MIAC, good for seventh in the conference, one spot from a playoff berth. To make it, they’ll need other teams to falter, but first they need wins. These coming three games could change the balance of how the season has gone. Against Hamline and especially in their crucial game against Augsburg, the home crowd will have to boost the Scots. Williams shared that having as many people as possible at home games really does make a difference in their energy levels.
“Our crowd really does help us with the energy and I think they’re a big contributor to our wins at home, so the more the merrier,” Williams said. “It’s nice for people to see our wins in-person, and like our games and our fight in-person.”
