MADISON – Lauren Carlini lacked any equivocation in her voice as the Wisconsin volleyball assistant coach predicted the score of the Badgers’ upcoming alumni match.
“Four-zero alums,” said Carlini, who will be on the alumni roster. “And I will be mad if it’s anything else. I’m ready to compete. Let’s go.”
Carlini’s confidence precedes a UW volleyball alumni match on Aug. 8 that will pit the current Badgers against a star-studded group of former players – and provide the first test for an especially young 2026 team.
Other alumni who are expected to suit up against the current team include 2023 AVCA National Player of the Year Sarah Franklin and 2025 first-team All-American Mimi Colyer. Sydney Hilley and Grace Loberg are among the players representing the 2021 national championship team. (Dana Rettke and Anna Smrek also will be there as coaches ahead of their national team commitments.)
“This is probably one of the higher-level alum matches ever,” Carlini said. “Just the opportunity – we couldn’t do this a couple years ago because not that many people were still playing professionally.”
When counting the alumni who are on the sidelines, the group has 11 current professional players, two Olympians and a combined 27 All-America honors.
“They haven’t trained together, so that’s what we got going for us,” Wisconsin head coach Kelly Sheffield said while in Chicago for the Big Ten’s volleyball media day. “But that might last a half a set or something. It’s going to be fun.”
Carlini said the alumni team will “probably get a little bit of work in” on the day of the match. In the meantime, she can already give a scouting report. Libero/defensive specialist Tiffany Clark is an “absolute dog in the backcourt.”
“We’re going to keep Frank on the outside, I think, if I had to guess,” Carlini said ahead of Franklin’s return to the UW Field House. “We’ll let her go hit her sharp cross and eat them up there.”
It also will be an early test for a Wisconsin team that is especially young. Even before the NCAA’s implementation of a five-in-five eligibility model, no UW player was going to be in their final year of eligibility in 2026. Nine of UW’s 18 players are officially freshmen (although Italian libero Anna Bardaro already is 21 years old).
Some of the alumni will be competing many more times in Madison as part of the 2026-27 League One Volleyball season. Colyer, Carlini, Caroline Crawford and Temi Thomas-Ailara are among the former Badgers on the LOVB Madison roster. (Hilley and Carter Booth are on other LOVB teams that will presumably visit Madison.)
“It’s awesome to see on a world stage that we’re still playing and still progressing our careers and having those opportunities that we didn’t have 10 years ago,” Carlini said.
All sentimentality aside, though, Carlini might use any advantage she can get as a current UW assistant coach to help her fellow alumni try to pull off her desired 4-0 sweep.
“I have to figure out how to poke the bear on certain people,” Carlini said. “I feel like, Jaela [Auguste], we can get it going with a little bit. Maybe Eva Travis. Charlie [Fuerbringer], I might just talk her out of a couple dumps here and there. … I kind of know what they’re going to do and try to hit.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Star-studded alumni match will test Wisconsin volleyball ahead of 2026 season
Reporting by John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
