Southern Oregon's volleyball team has reached the NAIA National Tournament in four of the last five seasons.

ASHLAND — The amount of talent that will soon walk out the door, contained within a list of nine names whose eligibility will expire at the conclusion of the 2024 season, is already a major source of anxiety around the Southern Oregon volleyball coaches’ office.

It’s an issue with a flip side that makes the Raiders as intriguing as ever for the next three-plus months.

They added one of the NAIA’s top-10 individual blockers, a senior transfer, to a front line that last year was fourth nationally in blocks per set (2.7). They have All-American Hannah Stadstad and three more senior all-star attackers back from 2023, another fresh off a redshirt who was their most prolific before an injury midway through ’22, and a group of setters who in their first season orchestrated the country’s 10th-highest team attacking average (.250).

The most notable departure was in the defensive-specialist department, where they brought in another senior transfer to join Kayla Neidigh, the team’s starting libero each of the last two years.

In short, SOU’s window to make another deep run remains wide open after reaching the NAIA National Tournament four of the last five seasons. The work begins Friday in the Raider Invitational at Lithia Motors Pavilion, with matches against Simpson (Calif.) at 10 a.m. and No. 14-ranked Bellevue (Neb.) at 6:30 p.m. Season tickets are available now at souraiders.com/tickets.

“The challenge this roster creates is a future challenge, knowing I want to get people opportunities and with this senior lineup they might not come as they normally would,” said Josh Rohlfing, who enters his 18th season as head coach with a 357-131 record. “We added great experience in key positions and created better depth, knowing that in this long season it’s going to be relied on heavily. We feel really confident in who we have on the court and that’s a luxury this time of year.”

PRESEASON POLLS: The Raiders checked in at No. 10 in Wednesday’s NAIA Top 25 preseason poll, their highest ranking since 2019 and tied for the third-highest preseason ranking in team history. They were second in the Cascade Conference coaches’ poll behind defending champion Eastern Oregon, a national semifinalist last year and the No. 3 team in the NAIA poll. Corban is the CCC’s third and final Top 25 representative at No. 12; College of Idaho is receiving votes. The first poll of the regular season will be released Sept. 4.

LAST SEASON: More than half of the Raiders’ lineup had to be replaced entering 2023, but some ready-made transfers enabled them to skip the painful parts of a traditional rebuild. They matched their third-highest win total in the last 30 years at 28-7 overall, landed at No. 12 in the final NAIA Top 25 poll, and finished third in the CCC standings with an 18-4 record. After ending the regular season on a 10-match winning streak, they defeated Loyola (La.) in the Opening Round of the NAIA National Tournament to advance to the 24-team final site for the sixth time in nine seasons. There, they went 1-1 in pool play, coming up a win short of a quarterfinal appearance.

POSITION BY POSITION

MIDDLES: The best news of the offseason came from Sadie Byrd, who elected to return for a sixth season with SOU (she redshirted her first and had the second wiped out by COVID-19). Byrd, a two-time selection to the All-CCC first team, is on pace to become the all-time leading blocker in Raider history. She was No. 3 on the NAIA’s blocks-per-set (1.5) leaderboard in 2023 and was the conference’s sixth-most efficient attacker with a .281 average. Byrd was and remains a known quantity, but SOU’s other middle, Tessa Zimmermann, emerged as a pleasant surprise and regular starter in her debut season. Now a sophomore, she averaged 1.1 kills on .288 attacking and 1.0 blocks per set.

The position got deeper, bigger and more talented with the arrival of Linda Conceicao. The 6-foot-1 senior transfer played last year at Lindsey Wilson (Ky.), where she was an All-Mid-South Conference honoree and No. 9 in the NAIA at 1.3 blocks per set. She’s another legitimate offensive threat, too, coming off a season in which she recorded nearly two kills per set on a .266 average.

“We’re very athletic in the middle and that group is really strong,” Rohlfing said. “Sadie is better offensively, Linda makes what was a really good blocking team even better, and Tessa is always so solid and steady that she’s going to find her way onto the court as well.”

RIGHT-SIDE HITTERS: In senior lefties Hannah Stadstad and Megan Perry, the Raiders have the only two players in the conference who ranked top-10 in both kills and attacking average. Stadstad became the Raiders’ go-to player offensively and the fourth player in team history to make the NAIA All-America first team, finishing with 3.1 kills per set, a .351 overall attacking average and the top CCC attacking average (.389) for any player in the conference since 2019. Perry joined her on the All-CCC first team with solid offensive play (2.8 kills/set, .289) and a reliable block (0.8/set) during her first season with the team. Rohlfing says Friley Curtiss, a redshirt last year and now the third player in the mix, is among the most talented blockers on the team.

“Hannah is one of the top hitters in the country, and she’s gotten faster and stronger,” Rohlfing said. “Megan really excelled at the end of last year and had one of the best offseasons of anyone on our roster, and Friley can be put in spots where she’ll be a good matchup against outside hitters.”

OUTSIDE HITTERS: The Raiders only got to see Mylena Testoni for 13 matches before her injury in 2022, but the impression she made netted All-CCC honorable mention anyway after leaving with top-10 conference marks in kills (3.2), digs (3.0) and attacking average (.263). In her place, Marin Mackey joined last year and immediately hit the All-CCC first team with the circuit’s seventh-best kills average (3.1) and stellar defensive numbers (2.6 digs, 0.5 blocks). They’ll be on the floor together as seniors, joined by two newcomers on the outside: freshman Kendyl Arnett, an all-state player last year at West Albany High, and senior Andressa Ribeiro Soares, a transfer from NCAA Division II school Fort Hays State (Kan.) who is a proven hitter but could make her biggest contributions at defensive specialist.

“Marin is exceptional all-around and could be a six-rotation player, and adding Mylena back into the mix is huge because she looks like she’s back to where she was when she got here,” Rohlfing said. “We know Andressa can play all over the floor, and Kendyl has high-level club experience and is showing she can play at this level.”

SETTERS: A league-best team attacking average was proof that Vitoria Mattos and Annie Hite made SOU’s transition to a brand-new setting tandem seamless in 2023. Mattos, now a senior, was third among CCC players in assists per set (5.7) and will reassume the starting spot. Hite, now a sophomore, tacked on 5.2 assists and 1.3 digs before going on to earn All-CCC mention in beach volleyball during the spring. Freshman Alex Ching-Sam gives the Raiders a third set of capable hands following a redshirt season.

“That’s as strong a group as we’ve had here,” Rohlfing said. “The two coming back are at a totally different level and Alex made a huge jump in the spring. They have a great understanding of the tempo we’re trying to get to.”

DEFENSIVE SPECIALISTS: Two proven players return on the back line: senior Kayla Neidigh, who led the team and was ninth in the CCC at 3.8 digs per set in 2023, and junior Tais Vega, who broke into the rotation in her first season with the Raiders with appearances in 33 matches. Two freshmen, Jadyn Daviscourt and Amanda Moffat, have earned glowing reports early on. The aforementioned Ribeiro Soares has solidified the group: though she was used primarily as an outside hitter during her junior-college days at Panola (Texas), she shined a DS last year at Fort Hays with 2.1 digs per set.

“Returning Kayla and Tais is huge: Kayla is one of the best serve-receive passers in the country and Tais shows great leadership all the time,” Rohlfing said. “Andressa is capable of playing libero and the two freshmen haven’t looked like freshmen, so we have a lot of flexibility.”