Penn State volleyball coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley hopes her Final 4 experience can help guide her team

It’s a long way from Hawaii to Louisville, Ky., but Katie Schumacher-Cawley has enjoyed every mile of the journey.

Schumacher-Cawley, Penn State’s women’s volleyball coach, knows all about what she calls the external “chaos” of the NCAA Tournament Final Four. She was there in Hawaii in 1999 when — as a two-time All-American — she led Penn State to the first of its seven national championships.

With a nod toward geography, Schumacher-Cawley said of this year’s Final Four venue in Louisville, “It’s going to be a little different look.”

But anything outside Louisville’s KFC Yum! Center doesn’t matter, anyway, and she knows it.

Penn State’s Big Ten champions (33-2) will meet Nebraska in a national semifinal Thursday after they defeated the Cornhuskers, 3-2 (25-21, 14-25, 25-22, 25-23), at Rec Hall on Nov. 29 to nail down a share of the university’s 18th Big Ten title.

Pitt and Louisville tangle in the other semifinal Thursday, with the winners advancing to the championship match Sunday.

Penn State is in the Final Four for the 14th time (first since 2017 and first with Schumacher-Cawley at the controls), but she said she’s too busy to process the enormity of the situation.

“I think everything’s been moving so fast … flying around, we have practice in a little bit (Tuesday),” she said. “I’m just so happy and excited for the program to be able to go to the Final Four, excited for our alumni. I’m really grateful for all the people who have reached out and wished this team good luck, my former teammates and players who came before me.”

They will compete on a bigger stage, but nothing changes for the players.

“We’ll stick to our schedule, still have our team lift at the hotel, keep things as normal as we can when we travel,” said Schumacher-Cawley, who is in her third season as head coach after replacing the legendary Russ Rose. “This team, they know what we’re going there to do. They are focused. They were excited to talk about it. My hope is that they soak it in and remember the goals they set at the beginning of the season.”

All four Final Four teams entered the NCAA Tournament as No. 1 seeds, and Penn State has experience with each of the other three. The Nittany Lions defeated Louisville and Nebraska but lost to Pitt, 0-3 (15-25, 19-25, 18-25), on Sept. 18 in front of a crowd of 11,800 at Petersen Events Center.

“We feel like we have a good feel for those teams,” Schumacher-Cawley said. “I know they’ll be ready, and I know they’ll be excited. We watched them play a lot.”

Schumacher-Cawley said Nebraska (33-2) is a well-balanced team with backcourt defense that can “pick up a ton of balls.” The victory this season was Penn State’s first against the Cornhuskers since 2018 and gave the Nittany Lions the belief “they can do it,” she said.

“If everyone does their job, we can be pretty successful. Everyone’s been putting in a lot of time on their skills.”

Schumacher-Cawley said Louisville (29-5) is “a totally different team” from the one Penn State defeated Sept. 3 (25-15, 25-19, 25-13).

“I think they are really confident. The middles did a really nice job last weekend (in Sweet 16 and Elite 8 victories against Purdue and Stanford).”

She called Pitt (33-1) “exceptional,” libero Emmy Klika “underrated” and the Panthers’ Rachel Fairbanks “a great leader being who she is and leading the charge.”

Penn State placed four players on the All-Big Ten first team, including freshman of the year Izzy Starck, Jess Mruzik, Camryn Hannah and Taylor Trammell.

Maggie Mendelson and Caroline Jurevicious, daughter of former PSU and NFL wide receiver Joe Jurevicious, are transfers from Nebraska. They weren’t big parts of the Cornhuskers team that eliminated Pitt from the 2023 Final Four, but they got a taste of the event’s intensity, Schumacher-Cawley said.

“Going through all the practices and chaos that goes with it, they understand that and have talked to the girls about that,” the coach said. “Even though they didn’t play, they have the experience of being in an arena like that and the exposure of the Final Four.”

Schumacher-Cawley, who is coaching, recruiting and being the face of the program while battling breast cancer, has used her playing experiences from the NCAA Tournament to remind the women “to soak it in and really enjoy it.”

“It goes so fast, embrace the little moments,” she said. “Those will be the ones that you remember.

“I’m just happy we’re making it back to the Final Four right now, knowing that it is so hard to win, let alone get to this position. It’s a special honor to do those things and do it the right way.”