Kiley Woods, the head coach of Austin High School in the Austin school district, said the 6-foot-3 Presley isn’t playing for the Maroons this season “and is being reclassified as a 2026 (recruit) and starting UT.”
Texas officials did not confirm the news Monday, and Presley isn’t currently listed on the Longhorns’ roster for the 2026 season. Texas, which went 26-4 last season and reached a regional final, begins its summer practice Thursday and opens the season Aug. 22 against Arizona State at the AVCA First Serve event in Milwaukee, Wisc.
Last season, Woods and Presley helped Austin High go 41-7 and reach a state championship game for the first time in 33 years before falling to Southlake Carroll. Presley earned All-Central Texas honors from the Statesman after tallying 107 blocks, 261 kills and 97 digs.
Presley, who completed her junior year at Austin High in May, played middle blocker for the Maroons and her club teams and will provide some needed depth at arguably the Longhorns’ thinnest position.
She ranked as the No. 11 overall prospect in the 2027 class by PrepDig. She now joins a 2026 Texas recruiting class that includes PrepDig’s top overall player in outside hitter Henley Anderson of Dripping Springs, its top national setter in Genevieve Harris of North Carolina as well as the second-ranked libero in Emma Cugino of Ohio.
While Presley may not have achieved that lofty a recruiting ranking, she projects as a long, athletic middle with plenty of untapped potential. She comes from a basketball family — both her parents played collegiate basketball and her brother Malik Presley played one season with the Texas men’s basketball team in 2024-25 before transferring to George Mason — and didn’t start playing serious volleyball until middle school.
On a social media post, Presley said about herself: “I can’t stop thinking about that 13-year-old girl wearing basketball shorts, who never imagined she would accomplish this much, let alone be given the blessing of playing volleyball in college at her dream school.
“In this next chapter of my life, I want to inspire every girl who has ever felt like she didn’t ‘fit in’ or believed she didn’t ‘look like a volleyball player,’ to know that none of that matters. If you love this game enough, it will love you back. And I hope that one day, a little 13-year-old girl with that same endless passion for the game watches me play on TV and says, ‘I want to be like her when I grow up.’ Just like I once did.”
Considering her age and relative inexperience, Presley seems like a redshirt candidate. However, Texas looks loaded at the pins and on the back row but seems thin at the middle blocker position. Ayden Ames, a two-year starter, transferred to Creighton in the offseason, and Texas coach Jerritt Elliott didn’t sign a middle in the portal. That leaves sophomore Taylor Harvey and redshirt junior Nya Bunton as the only players listed as middles on the roster, although 6-foot-4 redshirt freshman Addy Guido has cross-trained at both outside hitter and middle blocker.