The Class of 2023 – Analyzing Their Freshman Season

The 2023 season is complete, what a year for the Class of 2023 where a lot of these athletes start the year as a high school senior and finish it with their first year of college volleyball.  There is a lot of life going on in those 12 months. 

Class of 2024 National Rankings

I did a deep dive into our Class of 2023 National Rankings and how their freshman year fared.  I broke the year into the following categories: 

Played in 50% of the matches

Earned All Rookie/All Freshman/All Conference Honors

All American Honors

Transfer Portal 

I also did a Twitter poll asking what the ideal situation, or more so the realistic expectation would be in regards to playing time freshman year. 

Are the rankings perfect? No. This is a tool, a metric, not a code of law. This is one of the reasons why we compile rankings is that we can take a look at classes and track them into the college and what it looks like in regards to playing time, post season honors, and transfers. Here is what some of the data told us. 

98 of the 200 ranked saw playing time in 50% of their teams total sets played (49%)

35 of the 200 earned All Conference/All Rookie/All Freshman Team (17.5%)

8 of the 200 earned All American Honors (4%)

Made 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Team All America

Made Honorable Mention All America

*Grace Lopez, outside hitter at Miami was named Honorable Mention All America - she played club for Capitanas de Arecibo and is a member of the Puerto Rican National Team. 

Amateur Data Interpretation:

I can run a spreadsheet and do a few intermediate skills, but I didn't get too deep in the weeds with what the data tells us. However, here are a few things that I noticed. 

-49 out of Top 100 played 50% of their matches, 22 of them earned a postseason accolade

-49 out of the athletes ranked 100-200 played 50% of the matches (that is not a typo), 13 earned a postseason accolade. 

-In the Top 50, many of the athletes who did not see a lot of time in their freshman season are in programs that advanced to the Sweet 16.  For example, the recruiting class from Kentucky was a top five recruiting class in 2023.  Brooke Bultema and Ava Sarafa are playing behind All Americans this past season and did not log any sets played.  Not sure if they will use a redshirt.  Teammate Brooklyn DeLeye had a huge season for Kentucky and was awarded SEC Freshman of the Year. Other top 20 players from the Class of 2023 who did not see significant playing time this past season are suited up for the likes of Stanford, Texas, and Nebraska. 

-I went through every player's stats, however I did not thoroughly comb through the list of transfers from the “College Volleyball Transfers” account with their spreadsheet.  I found ten transfers most notably with Caroline Jurevicius who will transfer from Nebraska to Penn State where she will have four years of eligibility and two huge 2024 commits in Izzy Starck and Ava Falduto coming in.  Another transfer to note that was on the All ACC Freshman team was Sydney Nolan at North Carolina, she had a big time prep career for Notre Dame Academy and NKYVC out of the Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati area. 

-A group of freshmen who absolutely crushed it was the athletes who went to the Ivy League.  Princeton picked up a big time freshman class with Sydney Draper (KC Power) was Freshman of the Year in the Ivy while Kamryn Chaney (1st Alliance)  earned All League honors. Sydney Bold (Coast) and Erin McNair (Colorado Juniors) also saw significant playing time.  Yale won the Ivy and had significant contributions from Freshmen.  Betsey Goodenow (MAVS) was an All League performer while Laurence Abraham (Legacy) and Arya Jue (A5) made significant contributions as well.  Goodenow is originally from the Kansas City area and was able to come back “home” when Yale played Penn State on the campus of Kansas University.