NATCHITOCHES – This week Northwestern State opens the 2023 volleyball campaign and in turn, begins the season-long celebration of 50 years of Demon volleyball.
 
At every NSU home match during the year and all season long on social media, fans will have the chance to learn more about and celebrate the history or NSU volleyball through the years and the long list of players, coaches and accomplishments.
 
Every good celebration deserves a special guest, and who better to help kick off the festivities for the Demons than a four-time national champion and four-time national runner up as the first home opponent of the season.
 
Perennial power UCLA will make its way to Natchitoches on Monday, August 28 to play under the new bright lights of Prather Coliseum. First serve is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. and will be broadcast live on ESPN+.
 
"UCLA is a storied volleyball program on both the women's and the men's side of the game," ninth-year head coach Sean Kiracofe said. "It means more to play a program like them if you have a sense for the history of our game.  Then to add to it being a home match; it puts it on par with when LSU baseball came here for a game in 2019. We got a 3-1 win at home against LSU then and would love a repeat of that in our first home match."
 
There will be no charge for admission to the match.
 
The match against the Bruins will be the first of back-to-back home contests for NSU as it continues the home-opening week by hosting Jackson State the next night at 6 p.m., the second of six scheduled home matches in the first four weeks of the regular season.
 
With the most home matches in a single season in more than 20 years, NSU and its fans will have plenty of opportunity to hear about the program that began with its first team in 1973 and had a winning season in each of its first five years of existence.
 
The first future N-Club Hall of Famer joined the team just a few years after the initial team that included several dual-athlete players. Robyn Justin played from 1984-86 and was the first volleyball athlete inducted into the NSU Hall of Fame in 2008.
 
She was an all-conference player in the Gulf Star during her time and led the NCAA in aces during the 1986 season with 80, which still stands as the NSU record to this day.
 
After a few lean years to close the end of the 20^th century and transition into the Southland Conference, the program began its climb to prominence in the early 2000s. Priscilla Augusto earned the first All-Southland Conference award in 2003 and a year later Whitney King won the program's first postseason superlative award by being named Freshman of the Year.
 
King led the Demons in kills for three straight seasons and is one of just seven players in program history to have a 400-kill season, doing so in her freshman campaign. King's and NSU's primary setter during that time, Flavia Belo, still holds the record for most assists in a single season and is the only setter in program history to record 4,000 career assists.
 
The individual success of players like King, Augusto and Belo turned into team success after the hiring of Hugh and Stephanie Hernesman prior to the 2010 season, leading the program to its next tier of sustained success.
 
"I think that being able to build the culture and raising expectations for NSU volleyball was most rewarding," Hugh Hernesman said. "Prior to us arriving, NSU had 30-plus years of DI volleyball and had never finished over .500. We would not have come to Northwestern State if we didn't think that it was possible to do better. 
 
"We looked at the success of the other programs at the time as well as the administrative support for Olympic sports and felt as though we could get talented athletes to Natchitoches. We had the campus, community and culture as well as the town of Natchitoches to promote and a vision of how we could get it done. Just as rewarding for us is the continued success of the program. Sean has done a great job with the program since replacing us and we're so proud that the tradition has continued at NSU."
 
The co-head coaches propelled the program forward to consecutive 20-win seasons in 2012-13 and back-to-back SLC Tournament finals appearances in 2013-14 that included the only tournament championship in program history thus far in 2014.
 
The Hernesman's won 10 or more conference matches in each of their final three seasons in Natchitoches with a combined record of 37-15 during that time including the best single-season conference win total and percentage thus far going 15-3 (.833) in 2013.
 
The Demons made their first postseason appearance in the 2014 NCAA Tournament against No. 2 ranked and eventual Final Four team Texas. They would return to the postseason for a second time five year later under current head coach Sean Kiracofe with an invitation to the NIVC (National Invitational Volleyball Championship) facing Wyoming in 2019.
 
A key part of that 2019 team that also won 20 matches and went 11-3 in league play and made its way to the Southland semifinals was one of the most decorated players in program history Hannah Brister.
 
The Louisiana native etched her name alongside other greats in the program like current associate head coach Stacey Aldredge, née Difrancesco, who was a member of the 2014 title team and holds the career record for kills with 1,318, ranks third all-time with 1,383 digs and ranks in the top 10 in 15 other single-season or career categories in program history.
 
Brister and Aldredge were both named Southland Freshman of the Year and the LSWA All-Louisiana Freshman of the Year during their respective rookie campaigns. They were also each multiple time all-conference and academic all-conference honorees. 
 
Brister was on her way to eclipsing the career kills record following her single-season record 539 in 2019 where she was named Southland and Louisiana Player of the Year. She was just the fifth player in Southland history to be named Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year during their careers.
 
The COVID-19 pandemic derailed, among other things, Brister's track to the top of NSU's kill mountain but not before allowing her to become of the all-time Demon greats.
 
This past season more NSU volleyball records fell during an impressive 19-win season, the fifth most of any team and the second 19-win season in the past four years under Kiracofe.
 
For the first time in program history the Demons had two players record 500 digs in a single season thanks to Ashlyn Svoboda and Symone Wesley. They also had two players each record 100 blocks in a season thanks to Reaghan Thompson and Jordan Gamble, both freshmen on last year's squad, and the team won 11 of their 14 five-set matches, both single-season records.
 
 
The defensive calling card the Demons have under Kiracofe helped the 2022 team produce the third-most digs and second-most blocks during one season and have allowed Kiracofe to become the program's all-time wins leader. 
 
The Demons open their 2023 campaign this week looking to build on the recent success and add to the rich legacy that paved the way. With six starters and 10 total returners from last year's team, along with some key transfers, the sky is indeed the limit for what they can accomplish this year.