Portal Power
How TCU Volleyball navigates the college transfer portal
It’s a breezy spring afternoon inside the TCU women’s volleyball practice gym. Whistles and screams pierce the air. Feet pound on the wood floor of the small gym. Day after day, players and coaches come to practice focused on one thing - next season.
But winning is only one small part of a much bigger equation.
Like all college sports, volleyball has been transformed by an agent of unpredictability that didn’t exist a decade ago.
The transfer portal.
Spring Season
The portal has completely reshaped college volleyball and the importance of the off-season.
Spring season used to be the quiet stretch of the NCAA volleyball calendar. Coaches reset rosters and play around with potential lineups for the coming season; players practice more than they compete.
Now there’s a whole new dimension, as coaches balance recruiting and retaining, not only freshman; but transfer athletes as well. Rosters that look stable in the fall can become fully unrecognizable by the following spring.
Players at small schools leave for bigger stages, backups leave for a fresh start and graduate students leave for one last shot at a magical postseason run. But, not all reasons for transferring revolve around playing time.
As a result, college volleyball is faster, more mobile and more unpredictable. It has given athletes more control over their collegiate careers, but has reshaped how programs integrate new additions to their rosters and use the spring season.
“Competition is a good thing, and we just want to see our team succeed, so if they’re going to bring in someone that will make everyone better, I feel like that’s a good thing for the program, " said junior libero Alice Volpe.
Day-in and day-out at TCU, players fill the practice gym, wanting to make each session more cohesive than the last. For the athletes, spring provides the opportunity to work out the kinks before the grueling fall season, which is filled with long practices and multiple matches a week, all while balancing academics.
For head coach Jason Williams and his staff, the spring season has become the anchor of TCU volleyball. It serves as a time to set standards and establish culture, but most importantly, it serves as a pivotal time to integrate new recruits and transfers into the program.
“It felt like I had a sense of belonging and that I was welcomed with open arms because everyone is so inviting,” said Wisconsin transfer, Addie Horner, after meeting her new teammates and coaches for the first time.
Switching it up: The transfer portal
First introduced to the world of NCAA volleyball in 2018, the portal plays an integral role in college volleyball.
It was first established as an online interface used to simplify the transfer process, with hopes to “add more transparency” between players and coaches and “empower student-athletes to make known their desire to consider other programs,” according to the Junior Volleyball Association.
Originally, switching colleges was hard work. Players who wanted to transfer had to be released by their current program and, depending on the conference, would potentially have to sit out a year if they were moving to another program within that same league. These restrictions made for little use of the transfer portal and many complaints.
Today, transfer rules have loosened and fall mainly in the hands of the player, with little input from the administration or the program. All student-athletes looking to enter the transfer portal must contact their administrator at their current school and ask them to place their name in the portal.
Unlike the original days of the portal when programs could prevent players from leaving, they now cannot and must enter the player’s information into the virtual portal within two business days of the request, according to the Junior Volleyball Association. Because of these recent rule changes that have simplified the transfer process, it is not uncommon to see players enter the portal more than once throughout their collegiate career.
“I wanted to find a program that’s a little bit higher level,” with a bigger conference,” but had no idea how the transfer portal worked,” said Rosemary Archer, who transferred from Pepperdine to TCU.
Throughout their time in the portal, players are in constant contact with coaches at different programs, trying to figure out which is the best fit for them.
So, what started as a tool for player transparency has evolved into a virtual storefront, where coaches can browse through potential players to add to their rosters.
But not all coaches and programs utilize the transfer portal.
Work it: How other schools use the transfer portal
The portal operates as one large system to simplify and open up the transfer process, but it has created an entire ecosystem throughout college volleyball.
Every program, from yearly national championship contenders to mid-majors, has curated its own strategy for using the transfer portal. Some programs recruit solely from the high school talent pool, while others rely heavily on picking up top prospects from the transfer portal year-after-year.
There is no correct way to use the transfer portal, only the way of each individual program and what works best for them.
For example, TCU’s closest neighbor and biggest rival, SMU, has relied heavily on the transfer portal to make national championship runs. During the past two offseasons alone, SMU scored 10 different impact transfer athletes, who all have played a key role in the elevation of their program.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are tenured programs, such as Nebraska, which rely heavily on incoming high school recruits and building talent from the ground up, instead of building a roster of transfers.
In 2025, Texas A&M won its first national title in program history, a prime example of how the portal is flipping college volleyball upside down.
While A&M had a core group that had been with the program from the start, they also had a couple of key players like Baylor transfer Kyndal Stowers, who played a major role in their national championship-winning season.
Stowers, named the NCAA's most outstanding player, had an impressive 10 kills and the highest hitting percentage of any player on the court, which helped her team clinch the championship, according to the NCAA website.
In years past, the match to win it all was predictable, with the same few blue-blood programs winning year after year. The introduction of the transfer portal has leveled the playing field and allowed for more competition for the national championship.
Aggressive up-and-coming programs that aren’t normally championship contenders now have a real chance to make deep postseason runs and win it all, flipping the script and redefining college volleyball.
Changing a program: How TCU uses the portal
With the help of both original recruits and portal acquisitions, TCU has shown that it is a program on the rise and hungry not only for a Big 12 championship but for a national championship.
Everyday programs at all levels across the country must think about more than just tomorrow's practice plans.
For TCU volleyball, it is no different.
When looking at potential transfer portal additions to the roster, associate head coach Morgan Thomas said, “the culture is already set,” so “we’re just trying to find people that believe in us and what we’re doing.”
For transfers coming into TCU, the process can feel stressful, but trust in the coaching staff and their understanding of the transfer portal adds an element of clarity and calmness.
After Wisconsin's Final Four run, Horner had only three days to enter the portal and was contacted by several different coaches, many of whom even tried to recruit her out of high school the year before.
“After talking to Jason and the coaching staff and hearing his confidence in where he thinks the program can go and the players he already has here, it instilled so much confidence in me,” said Horner.
For Archer, who came from a less competitive conference, a big selling point that led her to commit to TCU was the coaches, who are “a big part of the culture,” which also “floods down to all of the players.”
“They are always having check-in meetings or asking us how we are outside of volleyball, just the little things that all add up and make me feel really welcome,” said Archer.
Every day, the TCU coaching staff has conversations about athletes in the transfer portal, managing their roster and maintaining open communication with all of their players in this new, more unpredictable era of volleyball
“The volleyball piece, for me, is easy, because winning games is not that hard, but managing a team, keeping people happy and building trust with 18 players is difficult, " said Williams.
Despite this new challenge, Williams attributes part of the program’s success to its mature and experienced coaching staff.
“We have more voices, more people, that can make sure that we are doing the right thing,” in order to make sure the “players have a high level of trust for us, that we’re trying to do the right thing for them,” said Williams.
Turning the Tide: TCU hires Jason Williams
Redefining an entire program is hard.
While the measure of a good program can be weighed in wins and losses, the true weight of a program is measured in culture. As a head coach, especially one coming into a new program, it is important to set the standard for what the culture should be.
After several seasons of being in the middle of the pack in their conference and missing the postseason, TCU volleyball made a coaching change. In 2021, Jason Williams was named the fourth head coach of the program. He had spent the last seven years as an assistant coach and associate head coach for a very successful Baylor program, according to Go Frogs.
“It’s scary, you know, when you’re getting looked at by different people, and then new coaches come in and you’re doubting whether they think you’re good enough or you’re the right fit for their program,” said Jalyn Gibson, a graduate student who was recruited by the previous coaching staff.
Coaching changes can make or break a program. If players don’t buy in or believe in their new staff, then everything crumbles. Luckily, that could not have been further from the case for TCU.
“There was some doubt, but then again, I just trusted the process, trusted in them, and everything turned out great,” said Gibson.
For Williams, the most important thing coming into a new program was honesty and transparency with his players.
“I was taught to build trust, so you just have to tell the truth” about a player’s role within the team, “where we think they can help us,” and highlight “all the other good stuff that we are working on” as a program, said Williams.
One of the biggest effects of the transfer portal is roster turnover. Programs across the country see their rosters shift dramatically within a matter of weeks.
For TCU volleyball, Jason Williams and his staff are the glue that keeps the program on the rise and the reason that more people transfer into the team than out.
Under Williams, the program knows exactly what it is and where it wants to go. The standards are clear, the culture is defined and the future is bright.
Looking to the future: TCU and the transfer portal
Looking to next season, TCU will bring in a core of veteran players to lead the team, while also benefiting from faces new to the program with varying levels of experience and different viewpoints.
Returning seniors like Gibson create a strong team foundation as they look to lead TCU to new heights. They have a unique understanding of the pace of practice, on and off-court expectations and the special bond that brings TCU volleyball together.
New pieces to the program such as Archer and Horner have proved to integrate immediately into the team and culture while also adding more experience to help the program continue to rise.
Although the portal has become an integral part of roster building in the current environment of college sports, it has given players and coaches alike more to deal with from year-to-year.
“It’s really hard to keep 18 girls happy all the time,” but “all we can do as coaches is try to be as authentic and transparent as possible” and remind them of the end goal of “competing for a Big 12 and national championship,” said associate head coach Thomas.
The addition of the transfer portal has created even more competition within top-tier teams and opened the door for teams like TCU to become legitimate championship contenders.
For athletes considering throwing their name in the transfer portal hat, it is important not to commit to whatever school gives you the most money and actually “find a community and culture that's worth spending time at, because with everything that's going on it's changing the way we view college sports,” said Archer.
Photo credit: Keegan Schmidt
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