photo by: Under Armour Next

Taylor Stanley

The new year will begin with a significant showcase for a player who could mean a lot to the Kansas volleyball team down the line.

Right-side hitter Taylor Stanley, a 2026 signee, will take part in the Under Armour All-America Game, an all-star match that purports to feature “the 28 best high school volleyball players in the country, hands down.” The event will take place at The Venue at UCF in Orlando, Florida, on Thursday and is set for livestreams on ESPN+ and the SportsCenter Next YouTube channel beginning at 3 p.m. Central Time.

Stanley will wear No. 23 for Team Roses, which is led by longtime Texas, USC and United States national team coach Mick Haley, as one of seven pin hitters on its roster. She is the only Kansan or KU pledge taking part in the event.

Stanley stands 6-foot-3 and has played for Blue Valley Southwest High School in Overland Park and the KC Power club team.

“Taylor definitely represents the best player in the area, and she’s choosing to be at her home school, and she wants to be a Jayhawk, KU coach Matt Ulmer said in a VBAdrenaline livestream for signing day, “and again hopefully people will want to follow that.”

She signed with KU in November and, according to her school newspaper, is set to enroll early, meaning she will join the Jayhawks not long after taking part in the All-America Game. VBAdrenaline.com ranks Stanley as the No. 12 overall player in the class and the No. 1 opposite.

“I don’t know what you don’t like about her,” Ulmer said on the livestream. “I really think there’s everything that you would want in an opposite. She can absolutely bring that. She can also score from the left, she can score from the back row, I mean, she’s going to be a six-rotation point scorer, and we know the names of the people that can do that at a high level, and I think that’s what she can bring.”

She has spent time representing the U.S. at the youth level, as she played with the under-19 national team, which competed above its age group at the 2025 FIVB Women’s U21 World Championship in Surabaya, Indonesia, in August. The U.S. went 7-2 with a ninth-place finish.

At KU, Stanley will be part of a six-player class that also includes pin hitters Tessa Dodd, Avery Poulton and Ryan Sadler and middle blockers Cydnee Bryant and Jaeli Rutledge. She may see significant action right away on the right side, in part because of the qualities Ulmer described and in part because of the offseason departure of all-conference opposite Jovana Zelenović.