How Craig Skinner turned Kentucky volleyball into national powerhouse

Craig Skinner has taken Kentucky volleyball to new heights.

Twenty-one consecutive NCAA Tournaments. A national championship in 2020-21. And a Power Four conference-record nine straight SEC titles.

That’s just on the court. Off it, Skinner has literally taken the program to new heights. 

First “from the rooftops” atop a table during a news conference urging “Big Blue Nation” to sell out Historic Memorial Coliseum when UK took on then-No. 18 Tennessee at home. Then atop the Lexington Financial Center — the city’s tallest building — telling fans to not “Brooklyn DeLeye” (UK’s junior outside hitter, whose last name is pronounced “de-lay”), “jump in your Lizzie Carr” (UK’s redshirt-junior middle blocker, whose last name is pronounced like the vehicle) “and go get your tickets at Memorial Coliseum” for the NCAA Tournament’s first two rounds. And then, most grandiosely,  from the passenger seat of a jet about 48 hours before the Wildcats’ Sweet 16 match against Cal Poly — “You don’t have to be first for your tickets,” Skinner said. “But don’t be last. Go Cats!”

Highway to Historic Memorial Coliseum🎵✈️#BBN, @UKCoachSkinner went SKY HIGH to make sure you know where to land on Thursday at 3:30 p.m.😼

Get your tickets now: https://t.co/27yLhwX1Iw#WeAreUK x #BBNpic.twitter.com/RTcpNi2Mp4

— Kentucky Volleyball (@KentuckyVB) December 9, 2025

After filming each stunt, Skinner walked into associate head coach Merideth Jewell Frey’s office giggling. “Like a little kid,” Frey told The Courier Journal. “‘Watch this,’” she remembered him say.

“I think he’s hilarious,” added Frey, who played for Skinner from 2017-18 before joining his staff in 2022. “He has dad jokes all the time. He’s very corny. He’s a lot of fun. And I think that our team sees that side of him way more than I did as a player.”

As the world of college sports swirls through unprecedented change around him, Skinner remains constant. Constant in his approach and constant in his success. His desire to prioritize relationships and his emphasis on developing volleyball players as people has built Kentucky into a national powerhouse. It’s what brought the Wildcats to Kansas City, Missouri, to compete for another national championship.

‘Everyone else is going transactional. We’re trying to go more relational’

Expectations are always high for Kentucky volleyball. 

Skinner’s current contract with the university only has two postseason bonuses: one for making the Final Four ($50,000) or one for winning the NCAA Championship ($75,000).

The unspoken message there being that every other accomplishment — SEC titles, NCAA Tournament appearances, Sweet 16 and Elite Eight berths — is status quo. That, on top of the school’s investment of revenue-sharing dollars into Skinner’s program, could very easily turn the head coach into a zealot for perfection, applying pressure wherever he goes.

But instead, he’s a model of stoicism during matches, getting up from the bench only to flash a challenge card at the officiating crew or deliver an instruction to someone on the court. 

If the Wildcats barely squeak out a win against some team they should dominate, he doesn’t light them up in the locker room afterward. Instead, he recites a classic Skinner-ism:

“Bendy bendy, no breaky breaky.”

And the team erupts with laughter. 

“You learn the most when you’re laughing and you’re smiling,” Frey said. “And I think he knows that.”

He has another one, Frey said. Something about “standing in the future, and standing in the past, and that means that you’re gonna piss on the present.” An eloquent heeding about the value of staying in the present, which is especially relevant during December.

“Our team dies laughing every single time.”

This is the side of Skinner that Frey encourages him to show more often. The side she didn’t see much as a player. 

The more of a rapport Skinner and the coaching staff are able to establish with the players, the easier it will be to hold them accountable. Criticism of one’s serve or blocking goes down easier when the person delivering that message also routinely takes them to coffee and asks how their family’s doing. 

“Everyone else is going transactional,” Frey said. “(But) we’re trying to go more relational.”

That emphasis on relationships carries over to the recruiting trail as well. 

If a conversation starts with questions about a prospect’s name, image and likeness deal, that’s an indicator to Skinner and his staff that the recruit might not fit. They have to love the game. And they have to recognize volleyball as a team sport. If they can do that, then Skinner pledges to invest in their dreams.

“Everyone has different strengths, and how do we utilize them to the best of our ability?” Skinner said. 

“But volleyball ends at some point or other for us all. So we all want to win championships. We all want to play on the national team, or be an All-American and all of those things. But as soon as that’s over, what’s left? So the people here will get them places, and I will do everything I can to get them to where they want to go, even if it’s not volleyball.”

‘You wanna play for someone like that’

Ask his players what they wish those outside the program knew about Skinner, and they’ll say that he’s “the kindest man in the world.” The word “care” comes up a lot, too. 

“Craig is someone who’s so easy to talk to,” starting libero Molly Tuozzo said. “He’s super down-to-earth and truly cares about you as a person. There’s a lot of programs where they just care about you as a volleyball player and not really as a human, but I think he does an amazing job here of making it better off the court and not just on the court.” 

“You can just tell how much he cares about this program,” outside hitter and Lexington Regional Most Outstanding Player Brooklyn DeLeye said, “and you want to play for someone like that because he truly cares about the whole program, and he just takes so much time to make the right decisions.”

This Kentucky team has been together since January. Spring semester orientation for newbies like Carr, who transferred to UK from Purdue, was on a Friday. The night before, Skinner invited the three transfers — Carr, star outside hitter Eva Hudson (Purdue) and DS/libero Molly Berezowitz (Marquette) — and three freshmen — Trinity Ward (DS/libero), Kassie O’Brien (setter) and Georgia Watson (outside hitter) — over to his house for cookies and brownies. 

All the assistant coaches — Frey, Kyle Luongo and Amaya Tillman — were there with their families. As was Skinner’s wife — former Nebraska assistant women’s soccer coach Megan Bechtold Skinner — and their three children, Sophie, Isabel and Eli.

“I literally walked in and I was like, ‘Wow, this is why I chose Kentucky,’” Carr told The Courier Journal. “Like, I knew right then, literally the second I was here.”

Frey also came to Kentucky by way of the portal. After two stellar years at Morehead State, she wanted to play for a big school. UK was one of six she visited in seven days.

Knowing she wanted to coach after college, she asked all six schools how they could help her land a job once her playing days were over. Skinner’s vast Rolodex and willingness to open it up to Frey intrigued her. As did his promise to help hone her coaching chops before she graduated.

She spent time her senior spring with a graduate assistant learning how to code a volleyball match. And because she didn’t get as much playing time at UK as she had at Morehead, Frey fell naturally into the role of a player-coach. 

After a couple short stints assistant coaching at Louisville and South Dakota State, Frey received a call from Skinner to gauge her interest in joining his staff.

“I thought it was just another call of, like, ‘Checking in. How’s it going?’” Frey said. “… Thought I would have to work my way up a lot longer than I did, and just very fortunate that I earned the respect from Craig as a player for him to want to have me come back as soon as the opportunity presented itself.”

Of all the four-letter words out there, “care” is the one, Skinner said, that’s most important in his profession:

“The best coaches I played for, I just wanted to be around them. … I want to be around people that care about me as a person. 

“… And when you do care about something, you will go above and beyond to try and make it even better.”

Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at [email protected] and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her “Full-court Press” newsletter here for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports’ biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky volleyball, under Craig Skinner, is NCAA Tournament fixture

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