Freshman Morgan Stitzer rallies with her team after completing a drill during a practice Aug. 19 at College Park Center. The team’s first game is against UT San Antonio on Aug. 28 at Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville, Arkansas
Photo by Treyson Abe
UTA volleyball will begin its second season of play under head coach Tania Schatow on Friday, entering a brand-new conference with a roster of seven returning players and 10 newcomers.
Of the newcomers, four are freshmen beginning their collegiate careers, and six are incoming transfer students. Schatow said much of the offseason was spent building team chemistry after the high turnover from the previous season.
“We spent a lot of time in the spring working on our culture and our team chemistry,” Schatow said. “One of the things that will help us is we have a lot of depth in positions that we didn’t have last year.”
Some of the fresh faces arrived from smaller colleges and hope to prove their worth in NCAA Division I. But not everyone that decided to take their talents to College Park Center did so for athletic purposes. Senior libero Lily Hopkins, a Tomball, Texas, native, transferred out of an everyday role at The University of Alabama for a unique reason.
“I finished my undergrad in three years, and the major that I was trying to go for my master’s degree wasn’t available at Alabama, so I took it as an opportunity to go somewhere new,” Hopkins said. “Now I’m closer to my family, I get a new environment and I get the master’s program I want.”
Some of the players who stayed in Arlington were the team’s highest producers last year, such as senior libero Samantha Glenn, who led in sets played and had the second-highest assists; senior outside hitter Evyn Snook, the points runner-up; and sophomore outside hitter Camryn McMinn, the kills runner-up.
Only two players, Glenn and Snook, are entering their fourth seasons at UTA. Snook said it was hard to see her friends leave, but she stayed because she wanted to maintain the team’s culture.
“Leaving would be the easy option, but I don’t think I wanted to take the easy option,” she said. “There’s a legacy that needs to be left behind, especially with a new program being built, and I wanted to be the one to step in and lead that.”
After UTA won the 2024 Western Athletic Conference tournament and played in the NCAA tournament, the Mavericks finished 2025 with a losing record both overall and in conference play, and got bounced from the conference tournament in one game.
UTA will open the season with four nonconference tournaments, facing several high-level opponents, including UT San Antonio, the University of Arkansas, the U.S. Military Academy West Point, the University of North Texas, Texas State University and Mississippi State University.
Schatow said the nonconference schedule was crafted out of learning from mistakes made in her first year as a head coach, where she said she scheduled a little too leniently.
“We had a false sense of, ‘Oh, we’re just really good and we’re just going to win all the time,’” she said. “I made the conscious decision to put us more in those pressure situations so that when we get to conference, we’ve already went through that.”
Freshman Morgan Stitzer practices receiving during a practice Aug. 19 at College Park Center. Last season, the team brought home 11 wins.
Photo by Treyson Abe
After finishing the nonconference slate, the Mavericks will enter their first season in the United Athletic Conference, where they play each team twice. The conference includes teams that the university’s volleyball program has never played before, or has not faced recently, in addition to two teams UTA shared a conference with last year.
UTA volleyball has never played the University of North Alabama or Austin Peay State University, and hasn’t played Eastern Kentucky University since 1995, or the University of West Georgia since 1974.
“I don’t really see any challenges, I just see opportunities. It’s going to be really fun just to play,” Schatow said. “It’s just a new opportunity, and I’m excited to see us just go after it.”
All of that leads to the UAC tournament Nov. 19-21 at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the winner earning an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
UTA’s season begins at the Razorback Invitational, starting against UT San Antonio at 4 p.m. Friday at the Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The team’s first home game will come when it hosts the UTA Tournament Sept. 4-5 at College Park Center.