Women’s Volleyball Preview 2026
Credit: Victor Holman (LIU Athletics)
This is our third year with boots on the ground for women’s volleyball in the NEC. Much like in football, we’re looking at an unusual amount of parity this season.
Out are the SFU Red Flash/Wolves, and in with a scramble for the top four spots. I spent way too much time building a prediction engine that worked like a card and dice volleyball game to predict who would step in with the consistently dangerous Frankies out of the picture.
The answer? It’s anyone’s game this year, with two major exceptions.
The Preseason All-NECBlitz First Team
AI generated image (sorry), NECBlitz generated team.
I couldn’t stop at just six players.
Long Island leads the way with three of the seven pre-season players selected. Sara Van Gisteren should be the best player in the NEC this year if her late season performance in 2025 was any indication. She was the NEC Tournament MVP and was as deadly on the service line (9 aces against Stonehill) as she was on the net (26 kills against FDU; 23 kills in the championship match against Saint Francis). Bella Correia is in her third year as a star in the NEC and after only being all-NEC second team the past two seasons will make the jump to the first team this year. Miabella Musignac is the best libero in the conference, a first-team all-NEC selection in 2025, and is the reigning defensive player of the year.
CCSU returns Olivia Keckler, who averaged 3.14 kills per set last season and figures to be the leader of a CCSU team poised to make a big jump (more on that shortly).
New Haven received a first place vote in the official NEC poll. They’ll be led by Lauren MacKellar, who posted 20 points and 11 blocks against Stonehill as part of a campaign that featured 278 kills and 313.5 points. If New Haven will take that big of a leap in their second season in the NEC, MacKellar will be a big reason why.
Le Moyne features Branwyn Lupton, the best name in the league, who has 518 career kills and will take another leap forward in her senior campaign as the best returning player on a Le Moyne team that will look to continue to improve under second year head coach Fiona Cunningham.
Finally, Mercyhurst returns Julia Shepherd, who was an all-NEC second team player in 2025 and led the Lakers with 270 kills and 2.6 kills per set. The 6’3” California native was second on the team in blocks last season as well. She’ll likely post first place numbers in both categories in 2026.
Projected Order of Finish
Computer
I spent… a lot of time trying to work out how to make volleyball play out as a card and dice game. And because I’m not a programmer, I used AI to help me to arrange the stats and use it to project for 2026 by running 139,000 simulations. Here’s what the computer thinks will happen in 2026.
As you can see, the computer doesn’t think LIU is particularly likely to miss the tournament (here, here) and has CCSU second with FDU bringing in new HC and former LIU HC Amable Martinez yet finishing third. New Haven, who was thought of highly enough to get a first place vote, finishes fourth most of the time… but with under 2% points separating them from Stonehill. Chicago State and Mercyhurst are in a dead heat, but Le Moyne improves from last season in terms of wins yet finishes in last place. Despite this, the computer thinks the Dolphins could make the NEC Tournament around 23% of the time.
It’s a league with a lot of parity.
NEC Blitz Predictions
I’m proud that I have probably the only dedicated NEC Volleyball simulator in the world. But I think it’s a little conservative. It does tend to treat transfers a little conservatively, and I think that might explain why the standings are so close (although, again, there’s certainly outliers like the likelihood of LIU and CCSU making the NEC Tournament).
LIU
LIU returns the two-year running Coach of the Year in Tony Trifonov and the most star power. It’s enough to automatically pencil them in right here. Coach Trifonov tends to run teams without a ton of personnel, so the lack of jerseys shouldn’t surprise or worry anyone here. I think the transfers will be better than the model indicates. I see no real scenario where LIU doesn’t make the NEC Tournament or win at least 10 games. I don’t think this team is as dominant as last year’s, but they are without a doubt the odds on favorite to win the league.
CCSU
I was not at all surprised to see my computer rate CCSU at second- it was where I had them penciled in, too! I like the returning depth in New Britain and Keckler has looked like she was on a collision course for first team since she was a freshman. There’s fair depth here and in the 3rd year of a rebuild this should be the season that the Blue Devils take the leap.
FDU
A new coach and the loss of Avery Bain to the U has FDU lacking some star power. The good news is that Coach Martinez knows this league and was already one of the best coaches when he left Long Island last season. Now at FDU, he’ll replace Coach Nguyen but the foundation has been strong here and it’s hard to put the Knights out of the tournament despite there being no one that jumps off the page like Bain did.
Stonehill
Stonehill should sneak into the playoff this season despite some losses like Mia Berardino. Sam Lloyd looks to step into the leader spot for the Skyhawks and very nearly made my first team. She’s a sophomore who launched 259 kills as a freshman. If she takes a major leap forward, she’ll make me look silly for not including her on the team as well as guiding Shovel Town straight to the tournament. And they’re NCAA Tournament eligible, so if they can pull an upset…
New Haven
Another new coach (second year running) but with some star power with Lauren MacKellar who was actually previously at Stonehill. The second-time new head coach makes it tough to slot them into the tournament, but at least one head coach in the NEC has major faith in the Chargers, which is always worth something.
Mercyhurst
I can’t help but feel like I’m underrating Mercyhurst, but with a 1-2 game swing they can absolutely make it back into the top 4. I really like Julia Shepherd and the possibility that she can step into an all-league role quickly. They were picked 3rd in the NEC, so I’m leaning towards my computer a bit but with an all-league player to start the year they are absolutely a threat to make a repeat appearance in the tournament.
Le Moyne
In the first season under Coach Cunningham the Dolphins won 4 games, all of which were at home. It’s an interesting stat because of the natural lighting Le Moyne’s arena features that definitely has the possibility of giving a home field advantage to the Dolphins. In any case, the Dolphins had actually won 4 games the year prior, so this is a case where there was no ground lost in year 1 of the rebuild. Now the recruiting begins and Le Moyne was able to do well in the Northeast/Canada as well as North Carolina, where volleyball is a little more entrenched. We’ll see if the recipe is enough to move the Dolphins forward in year 2.
Chicago State
I wasn’t sure how competitive the computer model would have the Cougars, but they’re actually projected to take a decent step forward in year 2 under Coach Jones, who understands advanced statistics in volleyball as well as or better than anyone I’ve ever spoken with. The Cougars still have a lot of ground to make up to get back to where they were under Coach Trifonov when they made it to the NCAA Tournament, but they will be better this season.
