I love watching history unfold before my eyes. We saw two non-HBCU volleyball teams with unprecedented diversity play in Minnesota in the same month.
First it was South Florida, with nine Black players, competing in a weekend tournament at Minnesota’s Maturi Pavilion a couple of weekends ago — they were featured in our Sept. 17 edition. Then last Thursday the Kansas City Roos opened their 2025 Summit League schedule at St. Thomas with five Black players on their squad.
In both instances, the visiting teams outpaced their opponents on the diversity scoreboard by a wide margin.
“I think we are,” admitted Roos senior middle blocker Kailee Deffebaugh when asked if her squad is the most diverse in the Summit League. Our quick check of this season’s nine conference volleyball teams easily confirmed this: Only South Dakota, South Dakota State and North Dakota State have zero Black players. Denver, Omaha, and St. Thomas (2), Oral Roberts (2) and North Dakota (4) joined Kansas City as being diverse in volleyball.
The 5’10” Deffebaugh, Kansas City’s service aces leader, had six digs in the 3-1 loss last Thursday at UST’s Schoenecker Arena. 5’10” right side/outside hitter Ryanne Wattree was second on the team with nine kills — she leads the team in kills.
5’11” redshirt soph Ledisi Kpea added three kills and five blocks, her third straight match in a row doing this, and she is the team leader in points. She also finished ninth in the league last season in blocks.
The other Roos Sistahs are 5’7” senior outside hitter Nyle Mathis and six-foot freshman outside hitter Clarke Henry.
Texas natives Mathis and Deffebaugh both played with each other in prep club volleyball. The former said that she didn’t envision the two playing together one day in college. “I was not expecting it because Kailee started at Southern and then she transferred here. So it was very exciting to have her.”
After her first two collegiate seasons at Southern a HBCU, Deffebaugh transferred to Kansas City and started 20 of 26 matches last season. “I love Coach [Christi] Posey,” she said of the Roos head coach, now in her 15th season. “She made me feel like at home, being so far away from Dallas, and then coming from Southern, I had that family feel and that togetherness there.”
Added Mathis, “I also really enjoyed meeting Coach Posey, and I really admired how [Kansas City] took academics seriously. I know a lot of colleges don’t really prioritize their academics, so I loved that aspect as well as the family part of it like Kailee said.”
We pointed out in an article last year that according to NCAA demographics there were 2,041 Black females playing volleyball across all three divisions compared to 12,648 White female players.
Both Deffebaugh and Mathis admit that the sport could use more Blacks and say the reasons for the comparably low numbers are varied.
“I just feel like we need more technique [taught] when it comes to the Black community coming into volleyball,” explained Deffebaugh, “because we’re such an athletic-like group. We go to basketball, we go to football, we go to anywhere else that doesn’t require so much technicality.”
“I think, adding on to what Kailee said, a lot of the technique comes from having the money to pay for it,” said Mathis. “A lot of Black communities don’t have so much money to pay $100 for private lessons every single day to be able to have that technique. I think that is a major part of it, and which is the reason that we go to track and other sports [instead].
“But I do see it moving forward and progressing,” she said of volleyball becoming more diverse at all levels.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.