By Gabriella Hartlaub
Six weeks into its inaugural season, the Professional Volleyball team LOVB Madison found itself at a crossroads. One of six clubs to participate in the first season of League One Volleyball (or LOVB), LOVB Madison is a team steeped in the volleyball culture that starts with the Wisconsin Badgers Women’s Volleyball team. Only the Badgers won a national championship in 2021, and six weeks into the season, LOVB Madison stared down an eight-game losing streak.
The team’s last win had come weeks earlier against LOVB Salt Lake, a five-set match that LOVB Madison won 3-2. It was their first win of the season, and for the first half of LOVB’s inaugural matches, it remained their only win.
“We just have to be better volleyball players,” Coach Matt Fuerbringer said in a post-game press conference on February 16th.
The losing streak was characterized by losses to each of the five other LOVB teams, in sets of three, four, and five. The last loss came in the inaugural Love Classic, an in-season tournament for all six clubs. Madison lost 1-3 to LOVB Salt Lake City, leaving the team at the bottom of the tournament with a record of 0-2.
“We get to go home next week, and we’re gonna get some W’s,” Fuerbringer said on February 21st, after another loss to LOVB Houston.
LOVB Madison snapped their streak in the very next game.
League One Volleyball, founded in 2020, has always had its eyes on creating a professional volleyball league. Its founders started with the idea of building up to a professional league through partnerships with youth teams to develop players into professional athletes. At the time of its creation, it would’ve been the first attempt at a women’s pro volleyball circuit in the United States since 1985. However, before LOVB could host its inaugural season, the Pro Volleyball Federation had theirs in the winter of 2024.
The two are easily confusable—and even host teams in the same cities—but have stark differences. For LOVB, the focus is on the communities in which the teams are headquartered, to the point of avoiding specific team names altogether. Each team is simply referred to as LOVB, and the name of the city in which the team primarily plays.
“The biggest thing for LOVB is wanting to attach the community and the fans to the team directly, like, this is your team,” Lauren Carlini, Olympic medalist and setter for LOVB Madison, said.
Carlini, a Wisconsin alumnus, is one of LOVB’s founding athletes. These athletes, all Olympic medalists in the sport, were the first team members announced for their respective franchises and serve on a council that advises owners about player needs.
“We’re trying to make history, and we’re trying to be a part of something bigger than ourselves,” Calrini said of the league’s first season.
For Carlini and others, this is the first chance they have had to play volleyball professionally without having to go overseas, which gives them more time to spend with their families close to home.
Carlini is not the only former Badger involved with the LOVB Madison team. Former Wisconsin players Temi Thomas-Ailara and Sarah Franklin are currently on the team’s roster, and Director of Volleyball Operations Annemarie Hickey is a former player and assistant coach at Wisconsin.
Led by Annie Drew-Shumacher’s 23 kills, LOVB Madison snapped their eight-game losing streak with a 3-1 victory over LOVB Omaha. Weeks earlier, after a loss to Salt Lake City, Drew-Shcumacher said, “You learn a lot more from losing than you do from winning.”
That seemed to hold as LOVB Madison lost the first set to Omaha but came back with force to take the remainder of the sets. Starring alongside Drew-Shumacher was Milica Medved, who logged 33 attacks on receptions.
“I think what people didn’t see was the strength that our girls had behind that,” Annemarie Hickey, Director of Volleyball Operations, said. “We [had] a lot of things that were happening behind the scenes, like we had really hard travel, and just every little thing that could go wrong was going wrong.”
Hickey credits the team’s second-half comeback to the work ethic of not only the players, but also the coaches and team staff. She said that the team added an extra morning practice so that players could get more chances to touch the ball and build confidence in their style of play.
“I always tell them that confidence is earned,” Hickey said. “So when they were in the gym and they were really earning that confidence, you could see that their play became better.”
LOVB Madison’s season ended in April 2025, with a loss to LOVB Omaha in the championship quarterfinals. The first-ever team to win the LOVB Volleyball finals was LOVB Houston, but Carlini, Hickey, and the LOVB Madison team have big plans for next season.
“I think we’re going to see just some different looks in the arenas and the jerseys and just the in-arena experience,” Carlini said. “We’re just going to take it to the next level.”
“I think we’ve done a great job, but I think there’s so much more ceiling that we can hit,” Hickey said. She acknowledged that the Alliant Energy Center isn’t going to be around forever and hopes that LOVB Madison can eventually have their own arena to play in. “It’s really exciting. I think that we have a great community for it.”
For now, Carlini is looking forward to her first official offseason as a professional volleyball player: “I don’t really plan on touching a volleyball for a while.”