Utah Women's College Athletes to Watch in 2026

Utah women's college sports keep producing names that are easy to follow and hard to ignore. Across volleyball, basketball, and lacrosse, the 2025-26 season has handed the state a group of athletes whose seasons are not projections or hype — they are documented in official rosters, game notes, and recaps. This roundup gathers six of them, each one a player whose page already carries a real, sourced moment.

The throughline is local. These athletes come from Orem, Morgan, Salt Lake City, Highland, Herriman, and Carbon County, and they play for UVU, Utah, Westminster, and USU Eastern. Together they map how women's college sports in Utah run from junior-college rosters in Price up through Division I rivalry games in Salt Lake City. For more of this coverage, the Utah women's sports hub collects it in one place.

Volleyball

The clearest star on this list is Sami Blackett, the Utah Valley outside hitter from Orem High School. Her official UVU bio credits her with 304 kills and 233 digs during a 2025 First Team All-WAC season, and that production did not come out of nowhere — she was the 2024 WAC Co-Freshman of the Year and an All-Freshman Team honoree before it. She also set UVU's single-match record with 33 kills as a freshman. Blackett opened 2025 as the center of a Wolverines roster picked first in the WAC preseason poll, which is exactly where an all-conference local hitter belongs.

She is not the only reason UVU's front row is worth watching. Alyvia Jaffa, a middle blocker from Morgan High School and the Utah Hive club, gave the Wolverines a clear depth marker when she set a career high in UVU's August 29, 2025 match against Navy. Jaffa is the kind of in-state front-row contributor who shows that UVU's preseason ranking was built on more than one name — the roster has size and local roots behind its top hitter.

Two more volleyball names sit further down Utah's pipeline, at USU Eastern in Price. Dani Jensen is a sophomore libero and defensive specialist from Price itself and Carbon High School, which makes her about as local as a USU Eastern roster spot gets. Raven Rodriguez is a freshman setter from Herriman and Riverton High School, giving the Eagles a Wasatch Front path into their Price volleyball lane. Neither carries a national stat line yet — their pages start with the public roster facts — but together they show how Utah high school volleyball feeds the junior-college level. Their season is covered in more depth in the USU Eastern volleyball roster story.

Basketball

Utah women's basketball has its own player to watch in Alyssa Blanck, a 6-foot-2 forward from Salt Lake City. Blanck is a BYU transfer listed on Utah's official 2025-26 roster as a redshirt junior, which gives her page both a hometown anchor and an in-state rivalry thread at once. She was among the Utes named in official February 2026 game-note coverage around the Oklahoma State and BYU matchups, keeping her attached to the season's narrative rather than just the roster card.

What makes Blanck a useful athlete to follow is that combination of place and tension. She belongs to Salt Lake City, but her path also runs straight through one of the program's clearest in-state reference points in BYU. For a frontcourt player on a Division I roster, that is a story that holds up across a full season.

Lacrosse

Westminster's Division II program rounds out the list with Grace Szwedko, a sophomore midfielder from Salt Lake City and Highland High School. Szwedko delivered the kind of concrete game moment that defines a lacrosse profile: she scored the insurance goal in Westminster's 12-11 home-opening win over UCCS on March 13, 2026, stretching the lead late in a tight RMAC opener that finished within a goal. A kinesiology major on Westminster's NCAA Division II roster, she gives the Griffins a player page tied to pressure and timing rather than just a roster line.

Lacrosse is where a single late play can shape an entire recap, and Szwedko's home-opener goal is exactly that. It is the kind of detail that turns a Division II roster page into a story worth tracking through the rest of the RMAC season.

Reading the six together

Read as a group, these athletes show how broad Utah women's college sports have become. The volleyball names alone stretch from an All-WAC outside hitter at UVU to two freshmen and sophomores building a junior-college roster in Price. Basketball adds a Division I rivalry thread in Salt Lake City. Lacrosse adds a Division II program claiming its own space on the local map. None of it requires exaggeration — every line above traces to an official roster, game note, or recap.

That is the point of a watch list built this way. It is not a ranking, and it is not a prediction. It is a map of where Utah women's college athletes already are on the record in 2025-26, and a reason to keep checking back as their seasons add more.

## Key facts: - Sami Blackett (UVU volleyball, Orem): 304 kills and 233 digs in a 2025 First Team All-WAC season; 2024 WAC Co-Freshman of the Year; UVU single-match record 33 kills - Alyvia Jaffa (UVU volleyball, Morgan/Utah Hive): set a career high vs. Navy on August 29, 2025; roster picked first in the 2025 WAC preseason poll - Alyssa Blanck (Utah basketball, Salt Lake City): 6-foot-2 forward, BYU transfer, redshirt junior; named in Utah's February 2026 game notes for Oklahoma State and BYU - Grace Szwedko (Westminster lacrosse, Salt Lake City/Highland): scored the insurance goal in a 12-11 home-opening win over UCCS on March 13, 2026 - Dani Jensen (USU Eastern volleyball, Price): sophomore libero/DS from Carbon High School - Raven Rodriguez (USU Eastern volleyball, Herriman): freshman setter from Riverton High School