Draft Prospect Profile: OH/OPP Paige Bartsch
When it comes to small school prospects, I'm not sure there's many I like more than Bartsch.
I like Paige Bartsch, and you should too.
Can I interest you in a tall and versatile player with a great personality who was voted both a team captain and Conference Player of the Year? The sales pitch writes itself.
Bartsch, who has spent her entire collegiate career at Boise State, will be a senior in 2024 and is poised to play her final season of eligibility as her team’s centerpiece. She was recruited as a middle blocker but was quickly rotated out to the right side, where she thrived. Now, she plays as an outside hitter and has taken substantial reps at both positions. It's tough to find substantial Boise State film online, but the highlights are fun. Bartsch notched at least 20 kills in thirteen games last season – including back to back 33 point outings against Colorado State and Wyoming – and failed to get to double digits just once.
“Right now, I play outside and I’m loving it,” she said to me in an early April interview. “It’s a little more challenging, I feel like, than the right side was for me because there’s more often a double block. Not every set is great because you get a little bit of the out of system stuff. You get a little bit of the junk. So, it’s a more fun to develop my game a little and kinda get a little more crafty. Still working on that part a little bit!”
If Bartsch’s career had a catchphrase, it would probably be ‘working on that!’ Even as a kid, she had the drive to work and get better, as was recounted in this story from Bronco Nation News. Her move from the middle to the right side as a freshman came about because the Broncos needed an injury replacement and she had to adapt to the position more or less on the fly. Moving again to the outside has required her to cultivate a whole new skillset as a passer.
“We started to work on my passing a little bit and then last spring definitely worked on it a lot more. Into the summer, I was just repping out a lot of passing, details in my form, and that, I think, really helped me. I focused less on hitting, which is a bummer because that’s my favorite part, but it did help me,” she explained. “As a middle, I never passed, and now I’m one of the top passers on my team. I don’t even know if that attests to my athleticism or more work ethic, I’ve just been working with my coaches a lot on that.”
“Teams haven’t really been picking on me too much because I’m not too bad of a passer; I can kind of hold my own,” she added with a laugh.
Bartsch’s impact extends beyond what she does on the floor. I’m usually pretty reserved when it comes to factoring ‘intangibles’ into my opinion of a player, but I was so impressed with Bartsch that I feel compelled to mention it here. She’s self-assured without being arrogant and modest about her shortcomings. There isn’t a team out there who wouldn’t love to have her friendly nature and high work ethic in the building.
That personality shone through when we discussed what she’d like to get better at during her last year of college play. She pointed to two aspects of her game in particular: blocking and intentionality.
“I just try to see what I was struggling at last season and I would definitely say that I need to get better at blocking. So, that’s definitely been a focus for me. Even when I was a middle, hitting was my favorite part and my priority. I went up for blocks and I tried to get blocks, but if I didn’t, it didn’t really matter to me as much as getting kills did. I lucked out getting to move to the right side and then to the outside. If I stuck in the middle, I probably would have struggled a little more,” she said.
Bartsch elaborated that when she’s playing a pin, she’s watching different things than she did during her days in the middle. What blocking skills she had are somewhat transferrable, but the required movements are not a one to one match. Standing at 6’4, she has the physical advantage over most players across the net from her in the Mountain West. There’s a difference between physicality and talent, though, and she wants to have both.
The same concept applies to her offensive game as well. She made it clear that hitting is her first love, but the best players don’t allow themselves to fall too much in love with hitting to ignore the nuanced side of offense.
“I’m definitely someone who likes to go out and play, I don’t wanna say by muscle memory, but based on how I feel. Sometimes I don’t even know what’s gonna happen,” said Bartsch through her own laughter. “So, adding more of a thinking element is good for me. It challenges me in a different way. It’s not something I’m totally used to when I go up to hit. If it’s not a great set, or if I’ve been getting dug a lot, it might catch them off guard if I tip the shot. I try to analyze more of the situation I’m in instead of going up with just a plan to swing hard.”
A player from the Mountain West conference with pro aspirations would reasonably be expected to dominate the competition as an amateur. In that context, her .202 hitting percentage in 2023 will understandably raise some eyebrows, but I would argue that it’s not entirely her fault. It’s true that Bartsch is prone to the occasional implosion; that can’t be sugarcoated. However, it’s entirely unhelpful that Boise State will continue to give her the ball no matter how ugly things are getting.
Here’s a sampling of examples to illustrate my point: In an October game against Colorado State, she hit for 15 errors and the team just kept right on setting her even though only ten of her 49 attempts in that game came down as kills. In two of the three games in which Bartch took over 60 attempts, she finished with a sub-.100 hitting percentage. From the outside looking in, it’s a baffling choice to force-feed a player who is so clearly off their game. Such high volume duds were an anchor on her season’s average and almost assuredly wouldn’t happen in a pro setting.
When it comes to the increased difficulty that would accompany a jump to professional ball, Bartsch believes that iron sharpens iron and would be ready to make the best of her chances.
“I don’t have any worry about that. I like to be challenged and put in those situations where I have to compete with the people around me. If nothing else, I like being able to play with those players and those girls would make me better. I went and played at the US Collegiate Team tryout, which was pretty awesome. I played with girls that whole weekend that were in those big conferences, and I feel like I competed pretty well, so that doesn’t make me nervous at all. I just think that it would push me more and that’s an exciting factor, for sure,” she said.
Even if a team thinks she’s not ready for the big time as a rookie, Bartsch could still be useful as a serving specialist off the bench. She was tied for 14th in D1 volleyball with .495 aces per set and her 52 total aces were tied for 20th, including seven aces against Colorado State in a single game.
“I was always okay with being a consistent server more than anything, and then if I wanted to add more difficulty to it, I could. So, I honestly don’t know how I’ve been so successful,” she said lightheartedly. “It’s a calm mindset of, like, I’m gonna try to hit this location I’ve been given. If I don’t, it’s not the end of the world, I just need to play hard in the point if I don’t hit it. I just take a deep breath and try to turn off my mind when I go back to serve and let my muscle memory do its thing a little bit.”
Something clearly clicked into place for Bartsch, who far outpaced her own production at the service line in 2022. She’s not about to question it, though.
“Serving isn’t a big stressor for me. It obviously can make or break games, but it doesn’t cause me a lot of stress. I try to be calm when I’m doing it because if I stress myself out at all, it’ll be probably not that good,” she remarked.
As things stand now, I’m looking at Bartsch as a developmental prospect with multiple avenues to professional success. She may not be as much of a sure thing as some of her more well known counterparts, but that’s why there’s more than one round of draft picks. To live up to that billing, she’ll need to reign in the zeal that gets her into error trouble too frequently.
If she can make progress in that direction, I wouldn’t be surprised if a team looks at the building blocks that are present in her game and talks themselves into thinking they can mold her into a fun rotational hitter. It’s a gamble that seems very worthwhile to me.
Some quotes were lightly altered for clarity. To read the full transcript, click here.