Lessons learned from the 2024-25 PVF Draft
I walked away from the PVF Draft with three lessons for the next draft cycle.
The aphorism “when someone shows you who they are, believe them” was never meant to be applied to sports, but the fit is natural. The sports landscape is one filled with an endless amount of smokescreening and PR-approved statements. In the end, though, most of what teams have to say in the public space is pretty meaningless.
In order to learn what’s really going on in the minds of shot callers around the PVF, or any other league for that matter, you have to get your hands on real live data. Aside from finding out the ultimate destination of stars like Anna DeBeer and Khori Louis, I was most excited about the data that would be supplied by this year’s PVF draft.
I learned that a player’s connections to League One Volleyball in the NIL space are not a major concern.
When the Orlando Valkyries drafted Norah Sis third overall, my jaw just about hit the floor. Sis has been an LOVB student athlete for a while now, but by spending their top pick to acquire her, the Valkyries are throwing in all their chips on the idea that she can be convinced to play PVF ball. This is no wild guess on their part. Players do not have to declare for the draft, but teams established lines of communication to players they were interested in to gauge their personality and interest. It’s safe to say that Orlando feels very confident that they’ll be making good on this pick.
That line of thinking was doubly reinforced in the second round with the selections of Elena Scott and Raina Terry, both of whom are LOVB student athletes I had scratched form my personal draft board despite their tremendous talent. The details of these picks make them high stakes as well. Scott was selected with the pick Indy leveraged from Atlanta to put the Vibe atop the draft order. The Fury chose Terry with their first pick in a draft class of just four players including no first rounder. Neither of these teams would have invested so heavily in LOVB-affiliated players if there was any doubt in their ability to play PVF ball.
We still don’t have the whole picture, though. In their article announcing training camp details, the Grand Rapids Rise included this footnote about fifth-round draftee and LOVB athlete Jess Mruzik: “Not expected to report to Rise training camp this season due to other contract obligations. However, by drafting Mruzik, the Rise retain her PVF player rights for two seasons.” Other teams have not released a comparable article, so it remains to be seen whether other players in a similar situation have a similar contract obligation.
I learned that setters aren’t valued the way I thought they would be.
Comparing setting to quarterbacking common across volleyball media, and perhaps that’s part of the reason why I thought PVF teams would spend bigger on college setters in this draft class. After all, setters touch the ball on nearly every play, making them key players in team identity and the overall success of the squad. Those factors make getting the right one supremely valuable and getting the wrong one a huge mistake.
Despite all that, when the final pick rolled around, only Camryn Turner, Mia Tuaniga, and Kendra Wait heard their name called. Rachel Fairbanks, Argentina Ung, and Kami Miner were all left in the cold despite sporting a pristine college resume, with even the draft show commentators left perplexed at the lack of interest in Ung. Instead of putting a premium on getting a young setter to keep waiting in the wings, teams sat back and waited until the late rounds to pick one up or passed altogether.
Hindsight is 20/20, but looking back at last year’s draft results, I should have been able to see this development coming. Only two setters were included in last year’s draft class — Vegas picked Hannah Pukis second overall and Atlanta picked Whitney Bower in the second round. Pukis never saw game action and Bower only played in 15 sets after spending the first half of the season on the practice squad. Teams interested in a setter this year looked at that information and decided that it would be wiser to tap into the much more crowded hitter market early.
I learned that teams are happy to put draftees in direct competition with each other.
Every team drafted multiple hitters. That might not seem significant at first glance, after all, hitters make up the majority of players on any given team. With only five rounds in the draft and two practice squad spots available for teams to stash rookies, though, I thought that teams would take a more balanced approach to finding depth. The strategy seems to instead be to make draftees battle it out for spots on the roster, hopefully drawing out the best performance possible in the process.
The most blatant example I can see is Omaha drafting four straight outside hitters, something I discussed in my draft superlatives article. Another example is Indy’s selection of Anna DeBeer, Nina Čajić and Isabel Martin. One would imagine that DeBeer is a virtual lock for the active roster, which means Čajić and Martin will be in competition for a backup job. It would be a poor use of roster space to hold onto two international rookies, which makes at least one getting cut a near guarantee.
You can see a similar trend at work among most other teams, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I wrote in my instant reactions article that I wasn't a fan of the strategy. That was because it seems a little silly to me to spend draft capital in a way that makes it impractical to hold the players acquired. On the other hand, a high percentage of draftees will wind up being cut by the time the regular season rolls around anyway. There’s just not enough room in the Federation for that many incoming players. At least this way, teams are buying insurance in case injury strikes or they fall out of love with their more highly drafted players.
Bonus: SMU head coach Sam Erger might be a genius
The success of SMU volleyball has been a storyline throughout the college volleyball season. Unranked to start the season, they quickly became the upstart team to root for, toppled undefeated Pitt, and have climbed all the way to top ten status. The PVF Draft represents yet another feather in the Mustangs’ cap, as three of their seniors were drafted into the Federation. Even more impressive, head coach Sam Eager found all three of those players in the transfer portal coming from smaller schools. Nearly every SMU starter is out of eligibility once this season ends, so there’s every reason to expect that Erger will be active in the portal again this offseason. I’ll be very interested to see what she does.