Michigan State Womens Volleyball

From Jenison to Breslin, fifty-four years on

Michigan State put out its first women's volleyball team in 1972 under Carol Davis, who coached a single season and later became the first woman to run an athletics department in the Big Ten. Karen Peterson followed in 1973 and finished 6-11. The first sustained run belonged to Annelies Knoppers, head coach from 1974 to 1984, who went 250-197-18 and took Big Ten regular-season titles in 1975 and 1976.

The eight seasons after that were bleak: Ginger Mayson went 67-181 between 1985 and 1992. Chuck Erbe, the programme's first male head coach, arrived in 1993 and finished 244-140 across twelve seasons, and is an AVCA Hall of Fame inductee. Under him the Spartans won Big Ten regular-season titles in 1995 and 1996 and reached the NCAA semi-final in 1995, which remains the deepest run on the programme's record.

Cathy George's seventeen seasons, from 2005 to 2021, produced more wins than any other Michigan State coach — 302-233 — and ten NCAA tournament appearances. The programme's twenty-two NCAA appearances in total are dated between 1975 and 2017. George's final years also took in a change of address: after five decades in Jenison Field House, the Spartans moved to the Breslin Center in 2022, trading a purpose-sized hall for a basketball arena that seats several times as many.

A vacancy, and a setter who came back

Leah Johnson took over in 2022 after building a reputation at Illinois State, and lasted three seasons. In December 2024 Johnson and athletics director Alan Haller agreed that she would step down with immediate effect. She has since resurfaced in the Southeastern Conference: Johnson is in her first season as head coach at Florida in 2026.

The replacement, announced on 22 December 2024, came out of the programme's own past. Kristen Kelsay, born in Wheaton, Illinois in May 1992, played setter for the Spartans from 2010 to 2013, finishing fourth in programme history for sets played with 473 and seventh for career assists with 3,040, and running the offence on the sides that reached the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2012 and 2013. She was also a CoSIDA Academic All-America selection.

Her way back was indirect rather than quick. Kelsay was an assistant at Michigan State from 2015 to 2018, then at Northwestern from 2019 to 2021, and associate head coach at Minnesota across 2023 and 2024, collecting an AVCA Thirty Under 30 award along the way. The hire was a bet that someone who had already set on this floor, and then learned the conference from two of its better staffs, would know what the roster was short of.

Year one: 18-12, and 11,578 people

Kelsay's first season went 10-0 through non-conference play and then thinned out. Michigan State finished 2025 at 18-12 overall and 8-12 in the Big Ten, joint tenth in the table. The underlying numbers were better than the record: the team posted its best hitting efficiency (.222), kills per set (12.83), assists per set (11.99) and service aces per set (1.71) since 2017. The soft non-conference schedule had flattered the start and taught the group very little about the second half of the year.

The season's biggest occasion was a defeat. On 17 October 2025, top-ranked Nebraska visited the Breslin Center and 11,578 people came to watch — a programme record and the largest crowd for a volleyball match anywhere in Michigan, beating the 8,789 who had watched the same opponent on the same floor on 6 October 2023. Nebraska won in straight sets, 25-15, 25-18, 25-20, hitting.383 against Michigan State's.209 and taking kills, aces, digs and blocks. Karolina Staniszewska led the Spartans with nine kills, Malayah Long set 27 assists, and Evie Doezema hit.368 for eight. The result dropped Michigan State to 14-3, 4-3.

That night established the ceiling of the audience before the team had earned it, and the 8-12 conference record is the figure Kelsay has spent the intervening year addressing.

Buying a harder schedule, and six new players

Eleven letterwinners returned for 2026 alongside a six-player intake. Senior transfers Alanna Bankston, a 6ft 1in outside hitter from Omaha with three seasons and three NCAA tournaments behind her at Louisville, and Zora Hardison, a senior middle blocker, brought postseason mileage the squad did not have. Hayley Ogden, a 6ft 1in junior middle blocker and opposite from San Diego, arrived by way of Gonzaga and CSUN. The freshmen were Madi Andrews, Colbie McKenna and Alana Whitfield.

The other change was the fixture list. Kelsay has been explicit about it: the average non-conference RPI was around 240 last season and about 130 this one, with four of nine matches against Power Four opposition. The results held anyway. Michigan State opened 9-0, the first time the programme has started 9-0 in consecutive seasons since 1975 and 1976, dropping three sets in total and only one of its last twenty-five.

The in-state fixture on 8 September was typical of the run: a 3-0 win over Western Michigan at the Breslin Center, 25-18, 25-19, 25-14, a sixth straight victory and a seventeenth straight set, sealed by a kill from the freshman Andrews. Kelsay, who called it a privilege to coach against the Western Michigan coach who had mentored her, has framed the season in chapters and said plainly that the aim is not to be a bubble team again.

Late September: one loss, one scalp

The unbeaten run ended on the Big Ten opener. On 25 September, Washington arrived at the Breslin Center with a 10-0 record and won 3-1 — 25-22, 25-13, 16-25, 25-13 — in front of a full Rally Row, the student section. Michigan State took the third set 25-13 and lost the fourth by the same score. Kelsay's reading afterwards was about execution rather than personnel: when the passing broke down and the team could not stay in system, it had no answer.

Two days later the correction came. On 27 September, Michigan State beat fourteenth-ranked Penn State 3-1 at the Breslin Center — 25-19, 25-21, 22-25, 25-19 — jumping ahead early in three of the four sets, including a 7-0 lead that Penn State recovered from to take the third. Ogden hit.400 for thirteen kills and Lia Schneider dug 21 balls. Kennedy Martin's nineteen kills, eight digs and six blocks were not enough for the visitors, who fell to 9-3. Michigan State moved to 11-1 overall and 1-1 in the conference.

The polls have not caught up. In the AVCA coaches' poll published on 21 September, Michigan State sat outside the top 25 on 44 points among teams receiving votes, behind Vanderbilt, UCLA and Kansas State. Nebraska was first with 48 first-place votes, Penn State fourteenth, and Washington — who then went to East Lansing and won — was on eleven points.

November now has somewhere else to go

The season ends differently this year. The Big Ten has never decided its volleyball champion by a playoff; the inaugural Big Ten tournament runs this November at the Fishers Event Center in Fishers, Indiana, with the championship match on 25 November. Commissioner Tony Petitti has presented it as the conference determining its champion in the postseason for the first time in its history. The field is the top fifteen regular-season teams, working through three opening-round matches, four second-round ties, quarter-finals and semi-finals, with one off-day built in.

The size of that field matters for a programme that finished joint tenth in the conference twelve months ago. A team that has beaten a ranked opponent at home in September, and lost narrowly to an unbeaten one two days earlier, now has a bracket to reach rather than only an at-large case to argue.