To mark the beginning of each season, college volleyball teams host squads from around the country in invitational tournaments. The host team schedules these games against opponents they typically wouldn’t face otherwise. 

The 2024 campaign proved no different for Middle Tennessee volleyball, as it hosted the Blue Raider Bash in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, last September. Across three different matchups, the Raiders caught a glimpse of their future, whether they knew it or not. 

The Blue Raiders won two of the three games that weekend, on the way to a 13-18 record in what turned out to be the final year of the Chuck Crawford era. Across eight years, Crawford went 89-126 with only two winning seasons.

A prevalent moment of Crawford’s last campaign was a 3-2 loss to Lehigh University. After falling to a 2-0 deficit, Middle Tennessee fought back to force a fifth set before falling to the Mountain Hawks and then-head coach Alexa Keckler. 

Jump ahead to February 2025. MTSU Athletics announced Crawford’s resignation, and soon after, MTSU Athletics launched an investigation into Crawford’s alleged player mistreatment.

With Crawford out the door and most of the 2024 team in the transfer portal, Middle Tennessee hired Keckler from Lehigh, bringing a face familiar with the volleyball scene in Alumni Memorial Gymnasium to Murfreesboro.

“I enjoyed my time when we came for the tournament,” Keckler said. “I was really impressed by how we were treated as a team and as a staff.” 

Keckler’s choice to take the job at Middle Tennessee did not come easily. She had spent the last seven years running the volleyball program at Lehigh, including a 16-13 2024, while notching the program’s first playoff victory in a decade in the Patriot League. 

“That was a loaded decision,” Keckler said. “It was definitely tough; the girls at Lehigh were amazing. We really started to catch our stride.” 

Although the program she built in the southeast Pennsylvania area made it hard to leave, Keckler’s ties to the Middle Tennessee area played a part in her decision. 

“The South is great, and I went to school at [Trevecca Nazarene University], so [I’m] familiar with the area, and that made it comfortable,” Keckler said. “I felt like I was ready for a little bit of change, and it felt like the right time and place.” 

Based on first impressions, it seems that the pairing between Keckler and MTSU has the makings of turning Blue Raider volleyball into a stronger program.

Marie Lowell, a senior who is one of three returners from the 2024 team, has seen some changes early on in Keckler’s tenure. 

“I feel like every day we’re encouraged to get 1% better,” Lowell said. “It’s more focused on a marathon and not a sprint. Each day is met with grace and compassion, and she [Keckler] is really focused on when we’re not in the gym, it’s not about being in the gym. It’s not about volleyball.” 

With a new face atop the program, Keckler is gearing up for a season with a brand-new team and resources she has never had before. 

“We have an opportunity and an avenue for international recruiting,” Keckler said. “We do have flexibility in the portal. I did not have that at previous institutions.” 

The newfound opportunities in recruiting gave Keckler and her staff the chance to bring in 14 new players. Seven came from the transfer portal, while adding seven first-year freshmen. 

“The transition was a lot, we were drinking from a fire hose,” Keckler said of her first offseason with MTSU. “It was a lot of trying to figure out who we could get. We were late in that. So the portal in December is where you have a lot of options and flexibility.” 

Although they were late to the scene of the transfer portal this past offseason, Keckler sees it as a positive for building out the roster. 

“It’s given us an advantage of finding players that match our personality and drive, which is important,” Keckler said. “I also think it’s put us in a situation where we’re very young, and we have 14 new people on our roster.” 

With the plethora of players putting on blue and white for the first time, Keckler has placed a priority on setting a foundation for the team. 

“Tackling that has been challenging,” Keckler said. “Creating that this is our standard, this is our expectation. We don’t have anyone that’s had two, three years to say this is how we do it.” 

With only two players on the roster who have spent multiple seasons in Murfreesboro, Lowell agrees that it’s difficult to set a new culture. 

“Programs are really hard to make great, and obviously everybody wants a championship,” Lowell said. “And you can’t do that if you have three returners or four returners each year. That’s almost impossible, and it puts a lot on the returners’ shoulders of showing what a coaching staff needs. I can really tell that they are building players that they want to keep here and developing.” 

While Keckler knows it’s hard to set the direction and tone of a program without veteran leadership, her staff is trying to find it early in their tenure.

She detailed that this work includes three areas for the team, including discipline on and off the court, accountability with the players or staff and players understanding the different roles on the team. 

“If we are doing things the right way, and we’re not just all about the result, I think the process of things will start to create a situation where we’re competitive in everything that we’re doing,” Keckler said. “… If we’re competitive, the wins will come.” 

The first matches of the Keckler era for Blue Raider volleyball will take place this weekend, as they travel to Indianapolis for the Big Dawg Kickoff. MTSU will have matches against Purdue University Fort Wayne, the University of Evansville and Butler University. 

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