How does one get from Los Angeles to Austin?
By plane, it’s a three-hour flight. By automobile, it takes around 20 hours. By train? Amtrak says it can get someone from point A to point B in 33 hours and 24 minutes.
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Texas Longhorns outside hitter Torrey Stafford (4) hits the ball over the net in the first set as the Longhorns take on the Tennessee Lady Volunteers at home in Austin, Oct. 8, 2025.
Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Texas Longhorns outside hitter Torrey Stafford (4) spikes the ball during the match against Stanford at the Moody Canter on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
For Texas volleyball player Torrey Stafford, the path from LA to Austin took nearly 20 years. It involved picking up a volleyball at a young age and then deciding she liked that sport more than basketball and track. It involved moving across the country to Pittsburgh, finding on-court success, friends and even a church home and then deciding that wasn’t the right fit. It involved entering the transfer portal, visiting the same Texas campus that your sister once starred on and then taking a recruiting visit to Penn State.Â
“There’s so many layers to that,” Stafford recently told the American-Statesman.
Texas Longhorns outside hitter Torrey Stafford (4) hits the ball as the Longhorns take on Baylor at Gregory Gym in Austin, Friday, Sept. 19, 2025.
Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman
That road less traveled, though, has led Stafford to Gregory Gym where Texas will open up another NCAA Tournament run this weekend. Texas has drawn Florida A&M as its first-round opponent on Friday night. If victorious, either Penn State or South Florida awaits in the second round Saturday.
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TEXAS VS. FLORIDA A&M
When/where: 7 p.m. at Gregory Gymniasium.
TV/radio: ESPN+.
Leading the Longhorns will be Stafford, a junior outside hitter and all-conference honoree who transferred to Texas this past offseason. Texas has won 23 of its 26 matches, but the Longhorns fell short of SEC supremacy both during the regular season and at the conference tournament. But as the No. 3 overall seed in the NCAA bracket, Texas is eyeing its third national championship in a four-year span.
Before Texas, Torrey Stafford was an All-American at Pitt
So, how does one get from Los Angeles to Austin? For Torrey Stafford, that journey started at her godsister’s volleyball game.
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Stafford hails from Torrance, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles that also claims Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian among its natives. The daughter of a pastor, Stafford grew up in the church. In fact, the family joke is that while her mother was pregnant, Torrey would dance and kick inside the womb while music played at church. But when her father stood to preach? Like the rest of the congregation, Torrey would be silent.
MORE: Jerritt Elliott welcomes challenges as UT a No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament
Growing up, Stafford sang in the church choir and was involved in both secular and praise dancing. Her mother, Toykia Brigham, recalled her daughter’s love of books and Lifetime movie marathons. Her father, Kevin, said that she once gave gymnastics and cheerleading a try and that he attempted to steer her toward basketball.
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But when she was six years old, Stafford and her older sister were taken to her godsister’s volleyball match. The Stafford sisters immediately took up an interest in the sport. TaKenya Stafford, who’s currently a senior outside hitter at Coppin State, signed up for a club team and Torrey would tag along to shag balls at practices. But the following year, she started playing and volleyball became her thing.
Pittsburgh outside hitter Torrey Stafford, center, who was an All-American this past season for the Panthers, committed to Texas in the transfer portal Thursday evening. She’ll have two years of eligibility remaining.
Jeff Faughender/Louisville Courier Journal
When she got to high school, Stafford began to think that she could play collegiately. She left the comforts of her “family-oriented” club team for one that could get her more looks from college coaches. She went to camps at Washington and Pitt and began to gain even more recruiting traction after she played with the youth national team. In the end, Stafford signed with Pitt.
Stafford had grown up going to USC and UCLA matches, but she “wanted to go away from home. … I wanted to experience something different.” In Pittsburgh, she got just that. Stafford enjoyed the beauty of the city and found a church to attend. The California girl also got herself a “nice, big coat” that made the winters manageable.
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On the court, she started immediately and ranked second among the Panthers in kills as a freshman. After earning a third-team All-American nod on Pitt’s 2023 Final Four team during her debut season, Stafford earned first-team honors in 2024 while averaging 3.7 kills per set as a sophomore. But after a Pitt team that also featured AVCA player of the year Olivia Babcock made another Final Four appearance last season, Stafford decided to transfer.
When asked about her decision to leave Pitt, Stafford was hesitant to give an answer. She didn’t want to speak ill of the Panthers or sound ungrateful for her experiences there. Ultimately, though, she has big goals. She wants to play overseas once she’s done with college and also wants to represent the United States at the Olympics. And she didn’t feel like she was being properly used or developed at Pitt.
“I didn’t think that I was utilized in the way that I wanted to be,” Stafford said succinctly. “The goals that I have, I feel like I wasn’t able to get there.”
So just after Christmas, Stafford entered her name into the portal. After two years in Pittsburgh, she needed a new home.
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Texas Longhorns outside hitter Torrey Stafford (4) spikes the ball during the game against Texas A&M at Reed Arena on Friday, Oct. 31, 2025 in College Station, Texas.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
Torrey Stafford becomes her family’s second Longhorn
So once again, how does one get from Los Angeles to Austin? For Torrey Stafford, that journey continued in the transfer portal.
As a 6-foot-2 All-American with Final Four experience, Stafford had no shortage of suitors when she decided to leave Pitt. Stafford, though, had the  privilege of being selective. She just set up visits to Texas, Wisconsin and Penn State, which had just won a national championship.Â
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Texas got the first shot at Stafford. Aside from what she heard about UT’s on-court plans for her, Stafford liked the sense of family within the Texas volleyball program and that the spouses of the coaches were around on her official visit. Brigham described Texas as a “family environment, family program, if that makes sense.”
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Stafford appreciated that UT coach Jerritt Elliott didn’t pry too much into her decision to leave Pitt. She had played in the Under Armour All-American game in high school with Texas returnees Ella Swindle and Nya Bunton, and she valued the honest feedback that she received from Swindle about the setter losing playing time her sophomore season and from Bunton about the injuries that the middle blocker had dealt with in college. It didn’t hurt that Ramsey Gary, a libero who was also an Under Armour All-American in Stafford’s class, was being recruited by Texas at the same time after deciding to transfer from Indiana.
The visit went well enough that Stafford never got on the plane to Wisconsin. She almost canceled her visit to Penn State as well, but still made the trip out of respect for Nittany Lions coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley. On Jan. 9, however, she announced that she would transfer to Texas.
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“I loved the coaches (at Penn State). It was nice. But it gave me the opportunity to actually confirm that Texas was a place for me,” Stafford said.
Texas basketball players Brady Sanders, middle, and Imani McGee-Stafford, right, get fired up in the second half against Tennessee at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, on Sunday Dec. 16, 2012.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Stafford’s decision to become a Longhorn was a full-circle moment for her family. She’s the younger sister of Imani McGee-Stafford, who played basketball at Texas from 2012-16.
McGee-Stafford, though, didn’t play much of a role in her sister’s recruitment to Texas. Stafford said that McGee-Stafford, who’s 11 years her senior, may have just sent her a text with the “Hook’ em hand” emoji during the entire process. McGee-Stafford said the extent of her efforts may have been passing along the phone number of former UT standout Khat Bell.
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“I was very hands-off,” McGee-Stafford said. “She knew I love Texas, and when she picked Texas, I was super geeked about it. But first of all, Texas sells itself, especially Texas volleyball. That’s a storied program.”
McGee-Stafford is a member of Texas’ 1,000-point club and is the fifth-leading rebounder in school history. Only one Longhorn blocked more shots in her college career than McGee-Stafford. However, she insists that “(Torrey is) way better at volleyball that I ever was at basketball.”
Texas Longhorns setter Ella Swindle (1) outside hitter Torrey Stafford (4) and middle blocker Ayden Ames (5) stand at the net during the match against Stanford at the Moody Canter on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
Torrey Stafford settles in at Texas and chases a championship
So, what does one do once they get from Los Angeles to Austin? For Torrey Stafford, that journey includes settling in and chasing a championship.
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Kevin Stafford describes his daughter as “full of life, she’s passionate, she is a fireball. She’s excited about life. She’s curious.” Mom says that Stafford is a fun-loving person with a great laugh. McGee-Stafford refers to her sister as “a little light.”
Near the end of her stay at Pitt, however, Stafford didn’t feel like herself and that shift in her personality was noticed by family and friends back in California. The move to Texas has helped her feel more like herself. Brigham said she was even approached recently by a Coppin State coach who had said they had noticed a change in Torrey.
“I said yeah, you’re seeing the real Torrey,” Brigham said.Â
MORE: How the Longhorns’ 2-0 lead was vanquished vs Kentucky in SEC championship game
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The real Torrey is averaging 4.68 kills and 2.43 digs per set for Texas this season while hitting .350. Stafford has claimed ownership of two of the 13 30-kill matches in school history, a notable feat since Texas hadn’t had a 30-kill performance since 2010.
“When she plays, she’s able to go into kind of a different mindset and compete at a really high level,” Elliott said. “Her leadership has been really big. Obviously, she put our team on her back the other night against Kentucky. I think she’s used to that. She wants that position, and she loves being in those situations.”
Next up for Stafford and the Longhorns is the NCAA Tournament. Players like libero Emma Halter and Swindle have played key roles on past Texas title teams, but the Longhorns are also less than a year removed from being upset by Creighton in the Sweet 16. Stafford herself has fallen short in each of the past two years of winning a championship.
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This year, Texas enters the NCAA Tournament with what Stafford feels is a championship-or-bust mindset. The quest begins Friday against Florida A&M (14-16).
“With the group that we have and the talent that we have, we can go all the way, and I don’t want that to count for nothing,” Stafford said. “I feel like we’re very special. But no one’s going to care that, yeah, we all loved each other. Let’s win too. Let that mean something.”