Retention (2024)

Time for the old Roster Roundup where I take a look at the current published rosters and figure out who each team really lost since last season. Yes, I’ve done the statistics loss articles but that is based on graduating seniors. This picks up the rest. The players that graduated early, transferred, were injured and those that simply felt volleyball wasn’t their path any longer. I call this retention and prior to the extra season afforded the COVID athletes (may want to rethink that name), it was an indication of stability in the volleyball programs. When teams can’t retain their players, it goes deeper than more statistics are needed to replace them. It goes to the stability of the program and the staff. It goes to their ability to recruit student-athletes that want to commit 4-years to their program. Maybe it means a coaching change happened or maybe it’s just dumb luck. We are in the last year of the Super Seniors so this exercise is more meaningful than in the past 3 years. Every Super Senior this year should have enrolled in 2020 and would be shown as a senior last year. None of them would have appeared to have graduated early if that makes sense to anyone other than me. (They would have been athletically a junior but the NCAA would have them listed as a senior.)

I always start off with the schools that have yet to publish even though matches start on Friday. This year we are left with only Redlands who make the Roster Roundup Hall of Shame (noted at the bottom of this article). This marks the 3^rd time where Redlands haven’t released their roster prior to this article going out, which ties them for the most. Both Mary Hardin-Baylor and Cal Lutheran just made the deadline.

Let’s first look at retention and the schools that retained their entire eligible squad. They are Schreiner, Chapman and Pomona-Pitzer. These are the schools that only lost their graduating seniors. In the case of Chapman, they even kept a couple of Super Seniors. In the case of Pomona-Pitzer, they snagged a Super Senior from Colorado College (I mean who doesn’t end up with a Super Senior from Colorado College?). Teams that hit the 85% mark are Puget Sound (95.2%), LeTourneau (93.8%), Concordia (93.3%), Hardin-Simmons (93%), La Verne (92.9%), McMurry (92.9%), Lewis & Clark (92.3%), Whitman (91.7%) and St Thomas (88.2%).It’s always cool to see the schools that struggled last year keep their players because it probably means they will be much better this season. It’s always scary to see the top teams keep their players because they will just be more dominate this year.

Here is my list of schools that have had perfect retention since 2018 (now including the three from this year):

Chapman 2023 Colorado College 2018 Cal Lutheran 2018 CMS 2018, 2022 George Fox 2018 Pacific Lutheran 2019 Pomona-Pitzer 2018, 2023 Redlands 2018 Schreiner 2023 St Thomas 2019, 2022 Southwestern 2021 Whitman 2021, 2022

Pomona-Pitzer joins the 2-time Club along with Whitman, St Thomas and CMS. Both Whitman and St Thomas came close this year to making it three times. (This is where a coach sends me an angry email telling me they only lost an athlete who graduated early. That’s too bad. You know the rules. Next time, have a professor fail them so they have to stick around another season.)

This year we only had two programs that retained less than 60%. One was just barely and the other was a record breaker. Mary Hardin-Baylor retained just 58.8% of their team from last year. (One player mentioned on my All-Region team as someone I considered was Katie Warden but she is no longer rostered.) UMHB struggles with retention but their nursing program is extremely difficult and now with a beach program there is usually a good reason these players skip a season. The record breaker was Dallas as they retained only 14.3% of their players. I am not sure what happened here but they are certainly starting over in 2024. Other schools in the 60% range were UT-Dallas (switching over to DII) and Caltech (tough academic requirements and a popular program where students can study overseas).

Before we look at the statistics, I always like looking over the roster sizes and the recruiting class. The largest roster usually comes down to Puget Sound and Austin College and this year the honor goes to Puget Sound (second year in a row) with 28. Second goes to Pacific with 26. Other programs with 20 or more are Cal Lutheran, La Verne, UC Santa Cruz, ETBU, HSU, Howard Payne, LeTourneau, Linfield, Whitman, Centenary, Concordia, McMurry, St Thomas, Chapman, Pomona-Pitzer and Whittier.

The smallest roster this year will be Caltech with 12. They typically have the smallest roster in the region. Willamette is right behind with 13 players. I always say if you are a High School senior and looking to play, check out the small rostered teams. (Lewis & Clark at 15 is the next lowest.)

The schools with the most seniors departing were UT-Dallas and Schreiner with 6 apiece. There were a number of schools with 5 and 4 seniors leaving.

The schools with double-digit first-years on the squad are Dallas (13) and Linfield (10). The largest recruiting classes (including transfers) were Dallas (14), Pacific (13), UT-Dallas (11), ETBU (10), Linfield (10) and Whitman (10). Pacific is always confusing because they have a JV program and will move players from there to their varsity squad and I don’t really know how to count them. The smallest recruiting classes were Lewis & Clark, Willamette and Colorado College all with 3. Colorado College has 19 on the roster so they basically just replaced their seniors and took their roster down from 22.

If we discard Pacific as they have a bunch of players coming over from the JV team (I think), the most transfers a program had was 4. This was done by La Verne, McMurry and ETBU.

One other number I like to look at is Returners. A large number here means a lot of consistency is coming back, which means the coaching staff doesn’t have to rehash a lot and that they really know what they have in the squad. Last year the leaders were Pacific Lutheran and CMS and they did very nicely for themselves. This year, it’s Puget Sound (20!) followed by Colorado College (16). A number of schools returned 15. I picked Whitworth for the NWC title but maybe it’s going to be UPS?

Alright, let’s get to statistics loss factoring in these players that have left the squad. The teams that have actually improved their losses due to Super Seniors are LeTourneau, George Fox, Puget Sound, Whitworth, Concordia, St Thomas, Trinity (of course), Cal Lutheran, Chapman and Whittier.

Here is the full table of schools sorted by their new statistics loss (returners percentage is also included):

Don’t bother looking for Redlands in that list.

So, as you can see, most every team has a new statistics loss number. If we go back to the 45% rule-of-thumb for statistics loss, then trouble lurks for top programs like Puget Sound, TLU, UMHB, Colorado College, CMS and Pacific Lutheran.

As I mentioned above, Redlands didn’t get their roster out in time for this article. I get it. There are a number of things going on. Of course, everyone else was able to do it, but this year Redlands is special. So, below is where I note these “special” teams in my Roster Roundup Hall of Shame. Any team since 2018 that didn’t get their roster done in time is noted below.

Cal Lutheran: 2018

Chapman: 2021

Dallas: 2023

Howard Payne: 2019, 2021

La Verne: 2018

Lewis & Clark: 2018, 2019, 2021

Linfield: 2018, 2021

Occidental: 2021

Pacific: 2018, 2019, 2021

Pacific Lutheran: 2018, 2021

Redlands: 2018, 2019, 2024