Why UVU Volleyball Entered 2025 as the WAC Favorite

UVU Volleyball opened the 2025 season at the top of the WAC coaches' preseason poll, with four Wolverines on the league's preseason all-conference team — the most of any program in the conference. The headline names are Sami Blackett, a senior outside hitter from Orem who already owns a First Team All-WAC selection, and Alyvia Jaffa, a middle blocker from Morgan whose August 29, 2025 season-opening match against Navy delivered a career-high block total in the program's first official scorecard of the year.

The combination — a returning All-WAC outside, a developing in-state middle, and a top preseason ranking — gave Utah Valley its strongest pre-conference profile in the program's recent history.

The preseason poll

The WAC's coaches voted UVU first in the league's 2025 preseason poll. The conference release also placed four Wolverines on the preseason all-conference team. No other WAC program had more than two preseason picks.

The poll's structure matters. WAC head coaches cannot vote for their own players or their own teams in the preseason ranking, which means each Utah Valley first-place vote came from a head coach who has had to game-plan against the Wolverines over the previous seasons. UVU's preseason ranking is built on the opponents' assessment, not its own.

The four Wolverines on the preseason squad include Blackett at outside hitter and Jaffa among the middle blockers, with two additional Utah Valley names in the back-row and right-side groups. That kind of cross-positional preseason representation is rare in the WAC. It tells a reader that the Wolverines are not a one-star team — every position group brought a player the rest of the conference already respected.

Sami Blackett, Orem High to Orem

Blackett is the Wolverines' senior outside hitter and the program's most-decorated returning player. Her path is short and local: Orem High School to Utah Valley, with the campus and the high school sitting roughly two miles apart in the same city.

The conference release credits her with a 2024 First Team All-WAC selection on the back of a 304-kill, 233-dig season. The kill total ranked among the WAC leaders, and the dig total — significant for an outside hitter — placed her among the league's best all-around left-side players. She earned WAC Co-Freshman of the Year honors in an earlier campaign, which gives the senior season a clean career arc: freshman recognition, sophomore-and-junior production, and a senior year that opened with the league's coaches voting her onto the preseason team.

Blackett's senior class also includes a degree timeline at UVU. The program's senior-day releases over recent seasons have detailed each outside hitter's academic path, and Blackett's profile fits the program's typical pattern: a Utah-developed athlete completing her degree at the campus she committed to out of high school.

For UVU specifically, the local-star storyline carries marketing weight. The Wolverines play at the UCCU Center on campus, and matches that feature a hometown senior on a top-ranked roster have drawn the program's bigger weeknight crowds in recent seasons.

Alyvia Jaffa, Morgan to Orem

Jaffa is a middle blocker from Morgan, Utah — a community of roughly 4,000 in the Wasatch Back, about an hour northeast of Orem. Her club career ran through Utah Hive, one of the state's larger 18-and-under club programs, before she signed with UVU.

The Morgan-to-Orem route is the shortest available for an in-state middle inside the Wolverines' depth chart. It also matters demographically. Most of the WAC's other top middles arrived from California, Texas, or recruited internationally. Jaffa is one of the conference's small group of in-state-developed middle blockers in a Power-Six-adjacent league.

The August 29 Navy match is the first official UVU release that listed her individual block total publicly. The recap credited Jaffa with a career-high in blocks against an FBS opponent, which the program's release framed as the night her position group moved from depth to expected production. Career-high lines in opening matches are common, but a verified career-high against a non-conference FBS opponent in the season's first weekend is a stronger signal — the kind of result that survives the league grind.

Jaffa entered the season as one of the four Wolverines on the WAC preseason squad. The Navy night gave the league a verifiable reason for that vote, ten days into the calendar.

The Wolverines' WAC context

UVU joined the WAC for volleyball in 2013-14 and has been one of the conference's regular postseason teams. The Wolverines won the WAC regular-season title in 2017 and have reached the conference tournament most years since.

The 2025 season carries an extra layer. UVU is moving its athletic department to the Big West for 2026, which means this WAC season is the program's farewell to its current conference. A team picked first in the preseason poll of its outgoing conference has a clean story line: try to leave on top.

UVU plays in the UCCU Center on the Orem campus. Volleyball matches at the venue typically draw a few thousand fans on conference weekends. With Blackett as the hometown anchor and the program ranked first in the preseason poll, the home schedule's marketing focus is on a senior class that grew up around the Wolverines.

What's next

The WAC volleyball regular season runs through November conference play. The Wolverines' weekly results, statistical leaders, and tournament seeding will be carried in UVU's official match recaps and the league's weekly conference notes. The WAC Tournament typically follows in mid-November.

For Blackett, the next concrete data points are her weekly kill and dig totals, which will determine whether she finishes the senior season as a First Team All-WAC selection for a second consecutive year. For Jaffa, the next checkpoints are the conference-play block totals — a career-high in the opener is the start of a season, not the conclusion of one.

The Wolverines' biggest WAC matches arrive in October. By then, the preseason ranking will either look like a fair early read or will need a reset. Either way, the program's release record opens with a top preseason vote, four all-conference preseason names, and an opener in which one of the four named players posted a career-high.