Sami Blackett Leads Utah State in Kills, Aces and Points in Her First Aggie Season

Sami Blackett spent two seasons at Utah Valley, leaving with back-to-back First Team All-WAC honours and a WAC Tournament title. On September 17 she walked into the Wayne Estes Center to face that same program, and turned in the most complete match of her Utah State career.

Twenty kills. Twelve digs. Five blocks. Three assists. A 3-1 win, and Utah State's first of the year.

The kills, the blocks and the assists were all season highs. The digs equalled her season best. It was her second double-double of the campaign, and it arrived on the night the Aggies set season highs as a team in five separate categories: 61 kills, a .308 hitting percentage, 58 assists, 74 digs and 11 blocks.

It was the loudest single night of Blackett's first year in Logan. It is not, however, the most impressive thing about her season. That would be the tally underneath it.

What the season line actually says

Through nine matches and 32 sets, Blackett has 106 kills, 12 service aces, 62 digs, 20 total blocks, nine assists and 129.5 points. She has started every match.

Those numbers lead Utah State in three of the five categories in the team's statistical leaderboards. She is first on the team in kills, first in service aces and first in points, and the margins are not narrow. The next-closest Aggie in kills has 69. The next-closest in points has 73.0. Blackett has 27.6 percent of every kill Utah State has recorded this season.

The more revealing figure is the one that does not show up in a headline. Blackett is the only Utah State player ranked inside the team's top five in all five statistical categories: first in kills, first in aces, third in digs, third in blocks, fourth in assists. Several Aggies are excellent at one thing. She is the only one contributing meaningfully at everything.

For a junior in her first season at a new school, in a new conference, that is a remarkable amount of responsibility to absorb, and she has absorbed it from the opening weekend.

Orem High, and the teammate who came with her

Blackett played her high-school volleyball at Orem High School, where she was a two-time all-state selection and the 2023 Utah 4A State Player of the Year. She left with more than 1,100 career kills and a state championship.

She did not arrive in Logan alone, in a sense. Middle blocker Ava Napierski played alongside Blackett at Orem, and the two are now in the Aggie front row together, with Napierski leading Utah State in total blocks. A decade of Utah high-school volleyball reassembled itself in a Pac-12 gym, which is exactly the kind of thing that makes a state's talent pipeline worth following.

The Utah Valley years

The resume Blackett brought with her is substantial. Across two seasons with the Wolverines she recorded 771 kills, 461 digs, 131 blocks, 67 aces and 56 assists, and earned First Team All-WAC honours in both years.

As a freshman in 2024 she posted 467 kills and won WAC Co-Freshman of the Year, a season that included a school-record 33 kills against Cal Baptist and a 27-kill, 12-dig performance against Utah Tech. In 2025 she reached double figures in kills in 17 matches, hit a season high of 21 kills in back-to-back outings against Weber State and BYU, and closed with a 12-kill, career-high 18-dig double-double in the WAC championship match that carried Utah Valley to the program's third NCAA Tournament.

That is the player Utah State recruited, and the Pac-12 noticed before a ball was served: Blackett was named to the conference's Preseason Impact List in August alongside Napierski and Olivia Ruy.

Where the team stands

The Aggies are 1-8. That record deserves its context rather than an excuse. Utah State is in its first season in the rebuilt Pac-12, was picked sixth of nine in the preseason coaches' poll, and opened with a non-conference schedule that sent it to Kentucky and then through Iowa State, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, Utah and Weber State before Utah Valley arrived in Logan.

Nine matches into a season like that, a program finds out who it can rely on. Utah State has found out. Blackett has been the constant in every one of them, and the September 17 result showed what the team looks like when the rest of the roster plays to her level: Addy Cook added 18 kills, Ruy 13, Silina Damuni 46 assists, and Lily LaFlesch 20 digs.

What comes next

Utah State travels to Provo on Saturday, September 19 to face No. 24 BYU at 1 p.m. MT, a fourth straight in-state matchup before Pac-12 play begins. For an outside hitter who has already faced Utah, Weber State and Utah Valley inside three weeks, it is one more chance in front of a home-state crowd.

Blackett is a junior. There is a full conference season in front of her, and on current form Utah State's scoring record for the year is going to run through her.

Key facts:

• Player: Sami Blackett, junior outside hitter, No. 13, 6-foot-1
• Hometown: Orem, Utah (Orem High School)
• 2026 season through nine matches: 106 kills, 12 aces, 62 digs, 20.0 blocks, 9 assists, 129.5 points in 32 sets
• Team rank: first in kills, first in service aces, first in points; only Aggie in the top five of all five categories
• Share of offence: 27.6 percent of Utah State's 384 kills
• Rates: 3.31 kills per set, 4.05 points per set, .142 hitting percentage on 325 attacks
• Season high: 20 kills, 12 digs, 5 blocks, 3 assists vs Utah Valley, September 17, 2026
• High school: 2023 Utah 4A State Player of the Year; state title and 1,100-plus kills at Orem High
• Previous school: Utah Valley, 771 kills, two-time First Team All-WAC, 2024 WAC Co-Freshman of the Year
• Team record: Utah State 1-8 in its first Pac-12 season