photo by: Kansas Athletics

New KU volleyball coach Matt Ulmer speaks at his introductory press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena.

In its first exhibition match of the spring, Kansas head coach Matt Ulmer said, his team was “horrible.”

The road contest against Wichita State saw the Jayhawks regress after they had made strides in their first spring practices under Ulmer and his newly constructed staff.

“It was really nice, though, because we got film,” Ulmer said. “And then I made them watch point for point, play for play, of that Wichita State matchup. I figured if I had to watch it, then they all needed to watch it again.”

With a second weekend of four matches under their belt, though, plus a team retreat for a couple nights in Kansas City, the Jayhawks are starting to jell a bit more entering their one and only home date of the spring against Washburn on Saturday at noon at Horejsi Family Volleyball Arena.

“I think once we got a chance to kind of get to know each other better and have some great conversations, I think everybody’s relaxed a little bit more and they understand where we’re going with this,” Ulmer said. “There’s a direction, there’s a purpose.”

It’s been a gradual process for a roster that preserved very little returning experience from Ray Bechard’s final year at the helm, one Ulmer has supplemented with choice transfers, mostly players who were formerly slated to play for him at Oregon, over the course of the spring.

“I know everybody says ‘Hey, it’s OK, the first year, whatever,'” Ulmer said on Wednesday, addressing the media for the first time since his introductory press conference on Jan. 21. “It’s like, I don’t really operate that way. I just want to put a great show, put a great product out there for everybody right away, let them know what this is going to look like and we’ll continue to grow as they go.”

While Ulmer’s squad has a long way to go in some key areas — “Our block, that’s been a real labor of love; whatever gray hairs I have, they’re going to triple because of our block,” he said — his team is bought in, and several returnees have impressed during the spring. He said middle blocker Reese Ptacek, last year’s Big 12 freshman of the year, could be one of the best slide hitters in the country. He also praised a pair of outside hitters in fellow rising sophomore Grace Nelson and rising senior Rhian Swanson.

In order to establish greater competition in the gym, Ulmer reeled in a series of transfers and a big-name high school recruit. The transfers include setter Cristin Cline, who averaged 10.26 assists per set at Oregon last year, as well as Ryan White from Oregon State and Audra Wilmes from Washington. Wilmes, who can play at either pin, has a longstanding connection to Ulmer given that her sister Emilie played for him at Long Beach State.

Those commitments all occurred fairly early on, essentially within Ulmer’s first three weeks on the job. More recent is the signing of incoming freshman Logan Bell on March 24. Bell is Indiana’s Gatorade Player of the Year, a prized recruit and versatile player who had been committed to Oregon and eventually chose to follow Ulmer after a competitive re-recruitment.

“From a coaching perspective, any time you get someone like that to commit to you and commit to your program, it’s a really great compliment and it makes you feel good about the direction of your program,” he said.

As Bell recently explained to the Indianapolis Star in an article about her commitment, she didn’t want to be limited to one role just because she’s somewhat undersized for an outside hitter at 5-foot-11.

Luckily for Ulmer, he had a ready-made player comparison in Brooke Nuneviller, a fellow 5-foot-11 outside who didn’t hit her freshman year but developed into a multi-time All-American.

“I see Logan in a very similar way, and it’s not just because she’s an undersized outside, it’s because of who she is as a person, similar to Brooke,” Ulmer said. “There’s a tenacity, there’s a look in the eye, there’s a desire there that they won’t be denied, and they’re going to prove everybody wrong.

“And worst-case scenario, Logan’s just this amazing back-row player for us. But I just have a feeling — that’s somebody that I just totally believe in. She tells me something, I go, ‘You’re right.'”

Ulmer said he believes Bell will provide instant leadership and competitive fire when she arrives on campus. She will figure prominently into the future, just like Ulmer’s current 2026 class of Bechard-era commitments Jaeli Rutledge, Ryan Sadler and Taylor Stanley and recent acquisitions Tessa Dodd and Avery Poulton (none of whom he has spoken about as they haven’t been able to sign officially yet).

“I don’t think I was expecting quite the response from recruits and club directors and club coaches and just how excited they are about Kansas,” Ulmer said. “Some of the very top recruits in the ’27 class have Kansas right at the top of their list … I think we’re just going to be looking at a different level of athlete than maybe where it’s been. That athlete’s going to help us really compete, like I said, for championships.”

In the meantime, the Jayhawks will compete against the Ichabods in an informal setting on Saturday, amid a big weekend of KU sports that also features a baseball Sunflower Showdown for which Ulmer hopes to “pregame” fans. Or they can drop in midway through the Kansas Relays and then head back out to Rock Chalk Park, he said.

It’ll be his first chance to see his new home arena in action for real.

“People keep asking, ‘What do you think about Horejsi?'” he said. “I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve never seen it live.'”

KU will then wrap its spring schedule on the road at powerhouse Nebraska on April 26, in the sort of match Ulmer says his team has to play in order to get where it wants to go as a national contender.

Fall update

In related news, the Jayhawks continue to stack high-level opponents onto their fall schedule. Already scheduled to play Vanderbilt in Nebraska on Aug. 23 and Penn State in South Dakota on Aug. 25 as part of the AVCA First Serve event, KU is now set to take part in the Opening Spike Classic at Wisconsin the following week, it was announced on Thursday morning.

The Jayhawks will take on the host Badgers on Aug. 29 and then familiar foe Creighton on Aug. 31.

“Four of the top teams in our sport will be competing in front of a great fan base on national television,” Ulmer said in a press release. “Our team will learn a lot about ourselves early in the season by playing Wisconsin and Creighton and seeing Texas (also taking part in the event).

“To compete for championships, we need to find matches and venues that challenge us at a championship level. That’s exactly what we will get with this tournament. I want to encourage our fans to make the trip to Madison for what will be one of the best weekends of volleyball in the country.”