Rutgers volleyball’s 2025 season didn’t produce a winning record, but it produced plenty of signs of life. The Scarlet Knights finished 12-20 overall and 3-17 in Big Ten play, both win totals the most in seventh-year head coach Caitlin Schweihofer’s tenure. This was further powered by a seven-match win streak that was the program’s longest since 2012, and a 9-3 nonconference mark. Rutgers also set the program’s all-time attendance mark, drawing 8,000 fans to Jersey Mike’s Arena for a matchup with No. 1 Nebraska, and picked up its first-ever Big Ten sweep of Ohio State. Now Schweihofer welcomes seven newcomers, four freshmen and three transfers, asked with turning last year’s progress into results.
The Freshmen Class
Brooke Baldwin
Brooke Baldwin is the second Baldwin sibling to win a Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year award, following her brother Patrick, a 2022 NBA first-rounder. Both of Brooke’s parents played at Northwestern, as her father Pat was the Wildcats’ 1994 Big Ten Player of the Year and now coaches college basketball, while her mother Shawn played volleyball there. Despite this high pedigree, her résumé stands on its own with 953 assists and a Division 1 state title as a senior, an AVCA Second Team All-American nod, and a 3.83 weighted GPA. Her Hamilton High head coach praised her willingness to work on her weaknesses and motivate teammates to do the same, and a teammate separately called her the kind of leader every volleyball player hopes to have. Off the court, Baldwin has volunteered with the Miracle League of Wisconsin, an adaptive baseball program for children with disabilities.
“Brooke leads by example and comes to practice ready to improve herself and the team. She loves to work on her weaknesses to make her a better all-around better player and she motivates the whole team to do so as well.”
Malia Romes
Malia Romes signed with Rutgers on the same day as a Kalida High School classmate headed to Findlay for track. She’s already made an huge call for a Rutgers commit as she graduated high school early specifically to get a semester of coursework in before volleyball travel ramps up. She told the Lima News that playing in the Big Ten means crossing the country regularly, and she wanted her academics established first.
“I just signed to play in January. I’ll go to classes and play volleyball. It was all about classes for me. Playing volleyball in the Big Ten is very hard because you’re traveling across the whole country. I want to get the school part down before I have traveling and school at the same time,”
Romes, as the middle blocker was her conference’s Player of the Year as a senior and a first-team All-Ohio pick after four straight first-team all-league selections.
Kami Dyrstad
Kami Dyrstad is the third of four sisters to come through the Papillion-La Vista South volleyball program, joining Kenzie, now a senior at Rutgers, and Kyla, who plays at Morningside, with youngest sister Kate still working through high school. Dyrstad told a Papillion TV station that signing with Rutgers meant a lot as
“It means a lot to me that people here are still going to going cheer for me a lot. It’s just a very talented state, so to go and represent Nebraska is a big deal.”
The libero closes her prep career with well over 1,000 digs and was named her state’s Class A Player of the Year and Libero of the Year as a senior.
Addison Wiemann
Addison Wiemann closed her high school career on the biggest stage Sunrise Mountain had to offer, earning Player of the Match honors in the Mustangs’ 2025 5A state championship game, a five-set loss to Chaparral in which she put up 100 attempts and 38 kills. Both of these marks are among the top 20 in state history for a single match. A seven-time USA Volleyball NTDP invitee who also played varsity basketball, Wiemann described her senior club team in a recruiting profile as a tight-knit group that trusted each other enough to play harder, chasing a title that had gotten away the year before. She is already redshirting as a true freshman at Rutgers, a decision the program has not explained publicly and one worth watching for an update on as the season approaches.
The Transfers
Karis Willow
Karis Willow spent three seasons at Penn State, including a role on the Nittany Lions’ 2024 national championship team, but her playing time never matched the program’s success. Willow appeared in just 14 matches across three years, 11 of them in 2025, for six total kills. She entered the transfer portal in December, shortly after defending champion Penn State was upset by Texas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, closing out a chapter she’d once called a childhood dream. The 6-foot-4 outside hitter was ranked the 58th-best recruit in her class out of Liberty Benton High School in Ohio, where she finished with 1,377 kills and 833 digs.
Skylar George
Skylar George’s path to Rutgers runs through one of the more frustrating redshirt years in recent transfer-portal history. A decorated Houston recruit with over 1,100 high school kills, she signed with Utah expecting to compete right away. However, the staff used her almost exclusively as a practice libero and she never appeared in a single match. She told the Daily Orange the lack of live reps made her feel like she’d gotten worse, not better, over the course of the year. Within two hours of entering the portal, she had more than 20 offers, and two weeks later, she was on Syracuse’s campus. She’s started every match she’s played in the two years since, finishing 2025 second on the Orange in kills with 296 and first in aces with 30. Her mother, Bianca George, told The Daily Orange that
“She was told by many that she could not go D-I, which fueled her more.“
This the doubt that only fueled her harder as she looks to continue to prove the doubters wrong after a successful career with Syracuse with fellow transfer Zharia Harris-Waddy.
Zharia Harris-Waddy
Zharia Harris-Waddy didn’t pick up volleyball until fourth grade, when her elementary school sent home a flyer advertising the team, as she’d been a dancer before that. The Lawnside, New Jersey native, raised by her mother and grandparents, went on to lead Paul VI to its first-ever state championship and become a two-time program MVP before starting all 89 sets as a true freshman at Syracuse. Her sophomore season featured the first kills-and-blocks double-double by an Orange player since 2021, and she led Syracuse with 91 total blocks as a junior in 2025 before an injury cut short her final three matches. She’s now pursuing a master’s in digital marketing while working toward a fifth year at Rutgers.
With a proven core returning, with Lily Bolen set the program’s single-season assist record in Big Ten play last year, and Aspen Maxwell posted the most kills per set by a Scarlet Knight since 2009, Rutgers is banking on this newcomer group to push the win total higher still. The Scarlet Knights open the season on August 28 against Purdue Fort Wayne as part of a tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, before making their 2026 debut at Jersey Mike’s Arena on September 8 against LIU.