This is supposed to be a slow, relaxing time for UTEP volleyball coach Ben Wallis.
The 18-player roster is assembled, and the schedule has been released, but players won’t start trickling in for another month, when UTEP’s summer camps begin. The run-in to the season in earnest doesn’t start until August and the opener, against Tulsa in Las Cruces, isn’t until Aug. 29.
Renovations at Memorial Gym getting closer
A bigger date, and the reason Wallis is anything but relaxed right now, comes Aug. 30 when UTEP opens its renovated Memorial Gym to take on rival New Mexico State. As Wallis sat in his office Wednesday, June 3, workers were installing and nearing completion of the new state-of-the-art Teraflex floor.
That’s the centerpiece of the $1.5 million renovation, but not the end of it. When the floor is completed, construction will break for the camp season, which runs for a month starting in mid-June, after which the floor seating and redone lighting begin.
That will run from late July into August, with everything set to debut for the Aug. 30 home opener. Meanwhile, UTEP has to figure out a workout plan for August, which could include working practices around construction or relocating to Forster-Stevens and sharing with basketball.
“We’ll figure it out,” Wallis said. “At the end of the day, it’s a stressful, but positively stressful event to have to be displaced for a little before we walk back into the best volleyball facility, volleyball-only facility, in the Mountain West Conference.”
UTEP coach Ben Wallis: ‘It’s like a nice puzzle’
Until then, Wallis is uncommonly busy for the “down” season.
“There are so many pieces to the changes in the gym,” Wallis said. “It’s like a nice puzzle; you have to put certain pieces around the exterior before you can start filling in the other pieces: Getting the paint going; making sure we get stuff out of the gym; making sure people are communicating with the contractors; making sure we’re opening up for people on time, closing up for people on time.
“It’s a lot of fun and exciting, stressful components that Danny Garcia, our CFO over in Brumbelow (central athletic administration), and our program and our project manager are doing to make this place look special.”
Wednesday morning Wallis was also entertaining the most welcome guest in the building, Dr. Bob McFadden, whose $1 million donation spurred the renovations that will include a safer floor that should cut down on the injury rash UTEP suffered through in their record-breaking 2025 season (25-5, an NCAA tournament bid despite four major injuries).
“This is amazing,” McFadden said of the ongoing renovation.
2026 UTEP Miners volleyball roster takes shape
Meanwhile, what UTEP puts on the floor will in obvious ways be quite a bit different than it’s senior-heavy team last year that graduated five players, four of whom (Kaya Weaver, Torrance Lovesee, Danika Washington and Sara Pustahija) will be playing professionally this year. What hasn’t changed is expectations.
“Our message all spring is, we’re not rebuilding, we’re reloading,” Wallis said. “When you look at a roster that graduated five special seniors who are all going to do some really special things in the next step of their other careers, you’d think you would be rebuilding.
“But UTEP volleyball now is not a rebuilding type of program. We are a team, a championship team, that wants to compete for the championship every year. We’ve got a culture, a roster and a program where we’re going to compete for championships every year.”
Then there is this: “we’re going to have 18 players, and eight are going to be freshmen — young, exciting, athletic players.”
That includes six new freshman signees (one of whom, Kaylynn Pardue, graduated early and has been around this spring) and two returning redshirts who didn’t play as true freshmen in 2025.
There also are two new transfers, setter Shea Bruntmyer from Samford and libero Lily-Rose Pichon, a Frenchwoman from Norfolk State, where she was MEAC defensive player of the year last season.
But the biggest “new” name isn’t new at all: sixth-year senior Ema Uskokovic, who blew out her knee last year in preseason a few days before being named to the preseason All-Conference USA team.
“What people sometimes tend to forget is we’re bringing back an all-American in Ema Uskokovich, who didn’t play at all for us last year,” Wallis said. “She was our best player (in 2025). She is worth five points per set.
“We won 25 games and she didn’t even touch the volleyball for us. We’re bringing back potentially the best player in the conference to play for us as a senior.”
Beyond that, UTEP has a lot of production to replace and that will start with returners who will go from key reserves to team leaders: Luvina Oguntimehin, Lauren Perry and Hannah Crowe, as well as redshirt freshman Mackenzi Davis, who was injured last season after flashing a lot of potential in the preseason.
Of Perry, Wallis said, “She was more a role player (in 2025) and now she’s going be a focal point for us. She’s going to have to play a bigger, more vital role and that’s what we did all spring.”
Move to Mountain West
All of this happens in the shadow of the move to the Mountain West. The MWC has been a one-bid league the last few years (Conference USA was a two-bid league with UTEP getting an at-large bid the last two years) and that one team, Utah State, is off to the Pac-12.
But Wallis thinks the strength of the Mountain West is how many good teams there are.
“In terms of depth it’s probably tougher,” Wallis said. “The Mountain West has fewer bad programs than Conference USA, but it’s just as (strong) at the top. There’s not a bad team in the Mountain West. It’s deep.”
The schedule format is a major difference. Of UTEP’s nine two-match series in league play that comprise their 18-math MWC slate, six are Thursday-Saturday, one is Friday-Sunday and the other two are what UTEP is used to, games on back-to-back days.
The league coaches, who voted for this, “wanted a day in between, so it’s going to put a premium on the staffs to put together a game plan the day in between, and really, really scout these opponents effectively,” Wallis said.
Non-conference schedule loaded
Wallis certainly isn’t afraid to see how his young team responds to being pushed early in the year.
“It might be the toughest non-conference schedule I’ve ever put together,” Wallis said. “For this young team, it is a test. At the end of the day, I felt like we needed a challenge ourselves. I felt like we needed to be battle tested.
“We play TCU, Baylor, Arizona and New Mexico State, all on the span of 10 days leading up to conference play. It’s going to get us ready.”
That even starts with mid-August exhibitions at Arizona State and at Texas State. The home highlight is the Big 12’s Arizona for the final non-conference game on Sept. 22, which follows games at TCU and Baylor.
It adds up to an interesting season, which is starting in an unusual but welcome way with ongoing renovations to Memorial Gym.
UTEP volleyball 2026 schedule
Date Time At Opponent Location
Aug. 15 (Sat) at Arizona State (exhibition)
Aug. 22 (Sat) at Texas Tech (exhibition)
New Mexico State tournament
Aug. 29 (Sat) vs. Tulsa
Aug. 30 (Sun) New Mexico State at Memorial Gym
Texas A&M Corpus Christi tournament
Sept. 3 (Thu) vs. Texas State
Sept. 4 (Fri) at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
Sept. 5 (Sat) UTRGV
Sept. 10 (Thu) at New Mexico State
Borderland Classic
Sept. 11 (Fri) Pacific
Sept. 12 (Sat) UC San Diego
Sept. 16 (Wed) at TCU
Baylor tournament
Sept. 17 (Thu) Incarnate Word
Sept. 18 (Fri) at Baylor
Sept. 22 (Tue) Arizona
Sept. 25 (Fri) at Wyoming*
Sept. 26 (Sat) at Wyoming*
Oct. 1 (Thu) UNLV*
Oct. 3 (Sat) UNLV*
Oct. 8 (Thu) at Nevada*
Oct. 10 (Sat) at Nevada*
Oct. 15 (Thu) New Mexico*
Oct. 17 (Sat) at New Mexico*
Oct. 22 (Thu) Air Force*
Oct. 24 (Sat) Air Force*
Oct. 29 (Thu) at San Jose State*
Oct. 31 (Sat) at San Jose State*
Nov. 6 (Fri) UC Davis*
Nov. 8 (Sun) UC Davis*
Nov. 12 (Thu) at Grand Canyon*
Nov. 14 (Sat) at Grand Canyon*
Nov. 18 (Wed) Hawaii*
Nov. 19 (Thu) Hawaii*
Mountain West Tournament
Nov. 24-25 (Tue-Wed) Las Vegas
* Mountain West game
Key UTEP additions from 2025
Back from injury
Ema Uskokovic, 6-0 Sr. outside hitter
Uskokovic was an all-Conference USA player in 2024 when she had 354 kills and 205 digs as a six-rotation player, then was preseason all-conference last year before she blew out her knee shortly before the season began. A sixth-year graduate student, she has 608 career kills.
Mackenzie Davis, 5-11 Fr. outside hitter
Over her career at Melissa, which ended in 2024, she was second team All-State, offensive player of the Year and at the beginning of her career district newcomer of the year. She was injured last year in the preseason and took a redshirt for 2025.
“She very well could have been freshman of the year in Conerence USA last year before she got hurt,” Wallis said. “She’ll be someone everyone loves. She is an athletic freak and it’s gonna be fun to watch her.”
Division I transfers
Shea Bruntmyer, 5-8 Jr. setter, Samford
The Abilene (Texas) native was a three-time Southern Conference setter of the week last year at Samford, which was her first since a transfer from LSU. She played in 27 matches with 26 starts last year, when she led the team with 770 assists (7.62 per set) while adding 144 digs, 25 aces, 19 kills and 11 block assists.
Lily-Rose Pichon, 5-7 Sr. libero, Norfolk State
Pichon became Norfolk State’s first MEAC Defensive Player of the Year when she had 412 digs, as well as 74 assists and 16 aces. Before that, the native of Saint-Saturnin, France spent two years at Colby Community College in Kansas and led the NJCAA with 726 digs.
Incoming freshmen
Laila Amos | OH | 5-11 | Fairburn, Ga. | North Atlanta HS
Caryme Molina | S | 5-7 | Pasadena, Texas | Pasadena HS
Kaylynn Pardue | MH | 5-10 | Greeley, Colo. | Resurrection Christian HS
Elizabeth Pickett | OH | 5-11 | Fort Worth, Texas | Covenant Classical School
Daisy Voskuhl | OH | 6-3 | Fulshear, Texas | Fulshear HS
Bella Widmer | L/DS | 5-7 | West Lafayette, Ind. | Benton Central HS
Bret Bloomquist can be reached at bbloomquist@elpasotimes.com; @Bretbloomquist on X.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: ‘Reloading’ UTEP volleyball eyes championship run in renovated gym
Reporting by Bret Bloomquist, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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By Bret Bloomquist, El Paso Times | USA TODAY Network
