Four Questions for the 2024 Badgers Women’s Volleyball Team (2024)

The 2024 Wisconsin Women’s Volleyball team is probably going to have a Trebekian level of answers this season.

Reigning National Player of the Year Sarah Franklin? Perhaps the answer.

Second-team All-American Anna Smrek? Definitely an answer.

All-American Carter Booth who was fourth in the nation in blocks per set last year? You get the picture.

The Badgers bring back nearly all the members of a front row that was second in the nation with a crazy 0.310 hitting percentage in 2023 and that led the nation in blocks at 3.1 blocks per set.

There are a lot of answers, yes, but there are also some questions that will dictate the shape of this last dance for Seniors Franklin, Smrek, Caroline Crawford, Julia Orzol, and Devyn Robinson.

5-1? 6-2? Catch-22?

Several of the unknowns about this year’s team really start with which system Coach Kelly Sheffield decides to run.

The Badgers have run a 6-2 system the last two seasons to take advantage of their glut of size and powerful arms in the front row. The front-row talent is back on campus, but so is the top freshman setter recruit in the country, Charlie Fuerbringer.

Conventional wisdom is you do not bring in the No. 1 rated freshman setter in the country in Charlie Fuerbringer and then run a 6-2, but Sheffield has never been a coach to bow to conventional wisdom.

During the 2021 title run, he inserted outside hitter Jade Demps in the back row as an extra attacker. The following season, he went with the unconventional choice of running a 6-2 with Izzy Ashburn and MJ Hammill trading off setting duties in the back row. Last season, he took two-year starting outside hitter Julia Orzol and moved her to the libero spot to allow Temi Thomas-Ailara to swing from the outside.

It is tough to argue against how these lineup choices turned out. Moving Demps to the back row probably won the Badgers a National Championship and last year’s team with Orzol at libero and the dual setters made it to the Final Four and put up the gaudy numbers referenced above.

The case for the 6-2 is the same as it was the previous two seasons. With the setter always back row, the front line will always have one of Booth (4th in the nation in blocks/set) or Caroline Crawford (16th in the nation in blocks/set) anchoring the Bucky Block, and the fully array of arms will be available to contribute to the team’s offensive attack.

The 6-2 lineup appears a feasible option entering the preseason in part because of the addition of graduate transfer Carly Anderson. Anderson was a two-time All-Big-Sky second-team selection at Montana, and she was impressive running the team during the two spring matches. The coaching staff has been quite high on her potential this year, which is a major reason they are open to running it back with the 6-2 again this year.

Zach Schuster

An argument for the 5-1 is in a 6-2 system, hitters need to get used to sets coming from two different setters. This was evidenced during the 2022 season when the Badgers struggled at times early in the season as Ashburn and Hammill worked to find connections with their hitters.

A 5-1 system would also leave an odd woman out. The 6-2 has been so successful because of the dynamic pairings the team has—Franklin and Orzol/Thomas Ailara, Crawford and Booth/Hart, and Robinson and Smrek—and from a simple numbers standpoint, someone would be left out of the regular rotation.

Then there is the whole thing where Fuerbringer isn’t coming 2/3 of the way across the country to run a 6-2, but again, Sheffield has shown he is not afraid to challenge his players and ask them to take on unexpected roles for the good of the team.

Can Julia Orzol Get Back in the Swing of Things?

There is no better example of a Kelly Sheffield player willing to take on a new role for the betterment of the team than Julia Orzol in 2023.

Orzol was a lifelong outside hitter who was a starter on a team that literally won a National Championship, but when the team added Thomas-Ailara as a transfer prior to the 2023 season, Orzol donned the libero jersey and willingly accepted the new challenge.

Orzol’s success was not surprising. A consummate hard worker—she has a 3.9 GPA and was an Academic All-American—Orzol became an essential part in shoring up the team’s back row during her sophom*ore season and so the switch to libero to keep her on the floor for six rotations was gamble worth taking for the Badgers.

With Thomas-Ailara graduated and went to play for the San Diego Mojo in the Pro Volleyball Federation, the second outside hitter position opposite Sarah Franklin is now open. Coach Sheffield indicated the team was looking for an outside during the spring transfer portal session, but they ended up not making any additions.

Orzol seems likely to return to the outside, but fortunately she won’t be completely out of practice. She was perhaps the first libero in the history of volleyball last season to spend warm-ups taking swings with the front row and not working on passing with the smalls.

She also saw some time at outside last season, including during a key stretch of three road matches when Anna Smrek was out with injury. Orzol hit 0.315 against Maryland and Penn State before having a tough match where she was stymied by the Purdue block with a 0.000 hitting percentage in a tough 5-set loss.

Zach Schuster

Depth at the outside hitter position looms as a potential Achilles heel this season. Franklin gave everyone a scare when she suffered an ankle injury while representing the U.S. at the NORCECA Pan Am Cup in July, which highlighted just how thin the Badgers are on the outside this year.

The third outside is newcomer Trinity Shadd-Ceres of Ontario, Canada. Shadd-Ceres is an athletic 5’11” attacker who is also a track athlete who made a run (jump?) at qualifying for the Olympics in the long jump during the Canadian Olympic Trials.

If injuries hit either Orzol or Franklin, Coach Sheffield may have to dig deep into his bag of lineup tricks to figure out how to fill the outside position. A 6-2 with Fuerbringer swinging from the front row? Stranger things have happened.

Will Gulce Guctekin Return to the Libero Jersey?

The player with the most to prove this preseason is arguably Junior back row player Gulce Guctekin. Guctekin has been a fan-favorite since arriving on campus from Turkey in Fall 2022 thanks to her on-court passion and impressive reflexes in the back row.

She immediately donned the libero jersey as a freshman in 2022 and led the back row during the team’s 28-4 Big Ten Championship campaign.

However, Guctekin was part of the baffling passing meltdowns that ended each of the last two seasons. Her woes appeared to come out of nowhere in the 2022 Sweet Sixteen match against Penn State when she had 6 receiving errors and then compounded that with 6 more in the loss against Pittsburgh.

Guctekin spent the 2023 season as a back row sub after the coaching staff decided to move Orzol to the libero position. Guctekin played well at times and seemed plagued by the 2022 postseason yips in others, culminating with another tough outing in the Final Four loss against Texas.

Badger culture is one of getting after it in the gym, and with a returnee and two newcomers, the battle for back row playing time has likely been an intense one the last two weeks.

Wisconsin native Saige Damrow returns for her redshirt freshman year after playing in just three matches in 2023 before suffering a torn ACL that required surgery. Damrow came to Madison with plenty of high school accolades–PrepVolleyball No. 2 libero in her class, 2022 Under Armour All-American–and she impressed when called into action during the 2nd and 3rd sets of the Marquette match when the Badgers appeared to be in danger of losing to their in-state rivals.

Damrow’s ability to challenge for playing time is probably going to depend on the status of her knee. She also missed part of her senior season due to injury and had surgery late in 2022.

Two baby Badgers are also joining the back row this coming season.

Lola Schumacher comes to Madison from Munciana, Indiana with her own impressive list of credentials. Schumacher played alongside Fuerbringer in the Under Armour All-American game, and she helped lead her club team to an AAU championship this summer before heading to campus.

Maile Chen is another West Coaster making the trip to the Midwest from Portland, Oregon. Chen was the top-ranked libero in Oregon, and she spent the summer playing with the FC Barca professional team in Spain.

Will Anna Smrek and Carter Booth Feast Ever More?

Anna Smrek and Carter Booth were both quite good in 2023, with Smrek earning a Second Team All-American nod and Booth a Third Team nod for her work in the middle. Each of the players put up impressive numbers during their respective campaigns.

Smrek hit a crazy 0.401 from the opposite position and racked up 2.7 kills per set. The highlight of her season was probably her 18-kill performance when the team ended Nebraska’s dream of a perfect season in the UW Field House.

One need look no further than the losses at Penn State and at Purdue that the Badgers suffered in her absence to see how valuable she was to the team.

Booth racked up 1.6 blocks per set and hit 0.431 with 1.8 kills per set. She racked up 10 blocks in the match at home against Illinois and hit 0.750 with 10 kills in the Sweet Sixteen revenge game against Penn State.

Despite the gaudy numbers, there is definitely a sense that both Smrek and Booth can do much more.

One of the things that held Smrek back during the 2022 campaign is Ashburn and Hammill never really figured out how to get Smrek the ball so she could unload, often hitting down over the block. Someone I know coined this the “T-Rex” and now you cannot not call it that when it happens.

Zach Schuster

Hammill did make big strides in getting the ball at the height Smrek needed as the season progressed, which contributed to Smrek’s run toward that All-American nod.

Smrek can be unstoppable thanks to her versatility and athleticism if Fuerbringer and/or Anderson are able to speed run working on getting Smrek the ball where she can go to work.

Of the six front-row players last year, Booth got the second fewest number of attack attempts per set at just 3.5 (Franklin led the team with almost 11 and Smrek and Robinson each got about 5.5). She did made the most of it with a gaudy hitting percentage that was nearly identical to 2021 Dana Rettke and 2022 Danielle Hart, to name a few recent successful Badger middles.

Part of her success as a middle is contingent on the quality of the passing and the 6-2 likely limits her opportunities to move around and give the defense different looks, but based on returns from last year, it appears the Junior is just starting to scratch the surface of her potential.