LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Louisville volleyball will begin its season Friday against the defending national champions.
Then it gets difficult.
No. 8 Texas A&M is first, followed Saturday by No. 6 Wisconsin. Before September is very old, the Cardinals will have seen ranked Indiana and TCU, then No. 2 Texas. No. 13 Creighton and No. 3 Kentucky aren't far behind.
And that's merely the beginning.
Louisville's schedule includes 10 teams in the preseason Top 25, six of them ranked ahead of the No. 7 Cardinals.
Apparently, the best way to find out how good you are is to eliminate all suspense.
This is not an accident. It isn't even particularly unusual anymore.
Louisville has spent enough years near the top of college volleyball that there is no point talking about whether it belongs there. Seven consecutive NCAA regional semifinals have settled that. National championship appearances have settled it. So have five straight years with Louisville ranked in the AVCA Top 10.
The more interesting question is what comes next.
And second-year Louisville coach Dan Meske has one answer that sounds strange until he explains it.
Fewer digs.
Louisville led the ACC in digs last season. Meske would prefer not to do it again.
"Digs is a very sneaky stat," he said. "If you lead the conference in digs, it's great. You dig well, but you also rally too long. You're not killing the ball."
There are worse problems in volleyball than being too good at keeping the ball off the floor. But that's where Louisville is these days. The Cardinals aren't trying to figure out how to hang around with good teams. They're trying to figure out how to put them away.
"We don't want to do that again because we want to kill the ball more," outside hitter Chloe Chicoine said. "I think you'll see us kill a lot more balls and just get after it."
Meske returns 11 players from last season's 26-7 team, including six regular starters. Chicoine and setter Nayelis Cabello are on the AVCA preseason Player of the Year watch list. Kalyssa Blackshear returns after being named ACC Freshman of the Year. Payton Petersen joins those three on the preseason All-ACC team.
And Meske has enough depth that in the weeks before playing the defending national champions he was still figuring out exactly what his lineup might look like.
Louisville's Kamden Schrand and Chloe Chicoine during a game against Kentucky in the KFC Yum! Center.
That's the kind of problem coaches volunteer to have.
"There's so many people that can help us out," Meske said. "I think our lineup is still very much in flux, but in a good way, where we have multiple options and multiple ways to win."
A year ago, Meske had plenty of talent but also plenty of introductions to make. Louisville had new pieces that needed time to learn how to play together.
This group already has that year behind it. Now the competition is about something else.
"It's a lot of competition going on in the gym right now," fifth-year senior Hannah Sherman said.
Meske said he recently put something resembling a lineup together for a scrimmage against Louisville's alumni and watched for the reaction from everyone else.
There wasn't any sulking from the players who weren't in it. No suggestion that the starters had been chosen and everybody else's opportunity had disappeared.
"There's just no semblance of that with this group, which is rare," Meske said. "I think everybody kind of sees we're going to keep competing for it."
Apparently they have been.
"This has been the hardest preseason, mentally and physically," Chicoine said. "Our coaches have done a good job of really pushing us, so that way when we get to the game, it feels almost easier because we have been going so hard."
There is a wonderful optimism in believing practice can make the defending national champions feel easier.
We'll find out Friday.
Texas A&M supplied Louisville with its final lesson of 2025, beating the Cardinals in five sets in an NCAA regional semifinal before going on to win the national championship.
Now Louisville gets another crack at the Aggies before the new season is 24 hours old. Wisconsin waits the next afternoon. There will be no easing into this. Nor does Louisville seem particularly interested in easing into anything anymore.
Meske believes the mental side of his program increasingly takes care of itself because the people who have been around longest understand what the standard requires.
Sherman may be the best example. She arrived at Louisville five years ago as a decorated recruit, redshirted and had to learn an important part of the Cardinals' offense almost from scratch. Meske said it took a year, then two, to become the slide hitter Louisville needed.
She stayed. She learned. She waited. Now Meske calls her "the epitome of how you build a great program."
"Great things don't happen by accident," he said.
Neither do schedules like this. ABC will televise just two regular-season college volleyball matches this season. Louisville will play in both of them.
For the Cardinals, No. 7 is one of their lower recent preseason rankings. Picked to finish third in the ACC isn't exactly a comfortable spot. Still, this could be one of Louisville's better teams, and that's saying something.
On Friday, they'll get their first national television close-up.
But it will be far from the last.
Copyright 2026 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
