No. 15 Creighton volleyball had a ‘great year’

Coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth is expected to have several key players back who were instrumental in the No. 15 Bluejays reaching the Sweet 16. Creighton saw its season end at 29-5 after a five-set loss to Louisville.

“I thought it was a great year, but I’m still sad,” Booth said. “You go 100 miles an hour and you never expect it to end and when it does, it kind of hits you.”

That end came on an emotional note in Pittsburgh, where the Bluejays lost that final set 15-8 to the Cardinals. The officials overturned a sideline call earlier in the set that changed the score from 5-4 Louisville to 6-3, and Creighton never seemed to recover.

Making it even tougher for Booth was that she was informed before the match that there were no sideline cameras at that regional site, something she hopes to change as incoming president of the American Volleyball Coaches Association.

“I found it ironic, in a very sad way, that such an impactful call was something brought up before the match,” she said. “We need to talk about mandating camera angles for a situation just like that at all of our regionals.”

Booth said she had a delayed reaction to the season-ending setback.

“When the Elite Eight games were going on a few days later, that’s when it hit me,” the coach said. “That was my hardest day because I knew that we had opportunities.”

Two returning players put up big numbers in that final match.

Junior outside hitter Norah Sis pounded 22 kills while junior setter Kendra Wait, named to the first-team regional squad, dished out 44 assists. Sis was the Big East player of the year in 2022 while Wait earned the honor in 2023.

Five of the team’s top seven hitters will be back. That includes sophomore Ava Martin (417 kills), Sis (302), freshman Destiny Ndam-Simpson (153), Wait (132) and junior Kiara Reinhardt (116). Two senior hitters who won’t be back are Kiana Schmitt (307) and Ellie Bichelmeyer (150).

Wait finished with 1,202 assists and was one of two Jays to start all 34 matches. She also led the team in digs (396).

The top two defensive specialists this season were senior Ellie Bolton (295 digs) and freshman Sydney Breissinger (285). Bolton, who has another COVID-19 year of eligibility is one of two Creighton players to enter the transfer portal. She announced that she’ll transfer to SMU.

The other Creighton player in the portal is defensive specialist Morgan Colangelo, a freshman from Overland Park, Kansas.

“We’ll return quite a few players, and we’ll add some pieces from our incoming players,” Booth said. “And you’re always looking at the portal, so you never know if you’re going to pick up a kid that way.”

The coach also mentioned the upside for 6-foot-1 freshman Jaya Johnson, who redshirted this season.

Two commits from the 2024 cycle will graduate early and enroll at Creighton at the semester. They are outside hitter Nora Wurtz from Douglas County West and setter Emersen Strain from Thornton, Colorado.

“We’ve only had one other player that’s joined our program early,” Booth said. “It’s not something that I’ve pushed but they initiated it.”

Wurtz missed her entire senior season because of a foot injury.

“In college, it seems like you can stay on forever,” Booth said. “You don’t get that back in high school.”

The coach said she’ll look back fondly on this season, one in which the Bluejays accomplished much — a 17-match winning streak, an undefeated home record, a 10th straight Big East regular-season title and a trip to the Sweet 16 for the third time in program history.

“When you reflect on the year we had, we did a lot of good things,” she said. “I also think about the leadership we had and the fact players weren’t getting in trouble off the court, and that makes the journey much more fun for everyone.”