A&M head volleyball coach Jamie Morrison has been busy this summer and recently led the United States to gold at the U19 Pan American Cup. During Thursday's edition of TexAgs Live, Morrison spoke about winning another international title, A&M's 2025 schedule and more.
Key notes from Jamie Morrison interview
- This is the youngest group I’ve ever taken to an international competition. We had a bunch of 19-year-olds, and we had a 14-year-old. It was trying to get them up to speed with a little more urgency, but I always love those because it's these kids’ first opportunity to put on a USA uniform. Playing the sport they love and getting to watch them do that, and the nerves and watch them win a medal, there’s nothing like it. It was a little different just because of the age group I was coaching, but in terms of reasons I do it, I was just as thrilled in the end.
- I think the interesting thing is that our whole team from last year gets to come back because of how young they were. There’s a lot of potential. Whenever you have those groups and get to compete, I was like, “Man, I want to coach this, but I don’t have time.” I think in terms of where it is right now, it’s good. But where it can be, I think it could be special.
- I came here because of the potential of Texas A&M. I came here because I wanted to create a pathway for what I did and be a part of USA volleyball and go play professionally. I saw Logan Lednicky down in Rio de Janeiro. I get chills as I’m talking about it right now. It’s a cool and gratifying thing to have one of my athletes go through those things and enjoy the things I enjoyed about it. It brings a smile to my face. To be able to share that with Lednicky is pretty cool and unique.
- People have seen where our program has gone from when we got here and where we are right now. I think seeing Lednicky points others in the right direction. The other thing is we care. I think it matters. I think it comes across in the way we recruit. It’s this combination of all these things, and people are seeing them. I get comments about how we interact with our athletes and show the way we care. I think it's a combination of all that. It’s the people we have in our program and the coaches as well.
- Our schedule is a little mix of challenges, and some of the challenges help out with our RPI. What I don't like is that I had the opportunity to bring in a top-10 non-conference game, and a lot of people didn’t want to play us. I would’ve liked to have one more top-10 matchup at home. It'll be a good mix of us being on the road. It mimics the way our season is going to work. A lot of times, we have a home match and then go on the road. It mimics some mid-week matches where we have to get up mid-week and go to two different cities. It’s going to be a little bit of NBA style where we get on an airplane, get off, go play, get back on and then go play somewhere else. I think we're going to have some great competition and get ourselves prepared for a really tough SEC.
- It’s an honor that we are one of the teams that will be a part of the 2025 AVCA First Serve event. I’m always asking when we can get on television because I want to grow the sport. I want people to see the game of volleyball. I’m excited because it's a good competition. I think it’ll be a great match against Minnesota and good for TV.
- I think we are the only SEC sport that hasn’t had an SEC tournament, but we’re getting that this year. I think they’re doing a great job trying to market it. I’m happy we get Texas at home. It’ll be on Halloween, so I encourage the student body to get out. It’ll be an epic match. It may be a top-five matchup. I’m excited about that. The whole season will be a grind. The thing I’m looking forward to is that we get a lot of those top teams at home. Even though I didn’t get the top-10 match at the beginning of the season, we get a lot of top-10 or top-25 matches once we get into SEC play at Reed Arena.
- I think one of the reasons people have us ranked highly is because we are returning everybody. Everyone knows Lednicky. I think we have the best team of middle blockers in Ifenna Cos-Okpala and Morgan Perkins. What’s exciting is that I can’t point to one person who is the person to look at. It’ll be hard to defend us. Kyndal Stowers was a transfer who I think will make an impact for many years, but our team is going to be balanced. We will have five attackers who can go out there and perform. We have a top-five recruiting class that came in in 2025 that I think is solid across the board. I’d say we have the best practice gym in the country right now.
- I think they know what we're capable of. When you have a group made up of this many seniors, there’s a sense of urgency. We probably have more people than we need right now. At some point, it's like, “Hey, we need to take care of today and be present every day of the season.” It doesn’t matter who we win or lose to.
- We’re one of the few sports that don't get access to our athletes during the summer. It’s on them right now to do what they need to do. I really trust them, though. I think they’re trying to do everything they need to do to get to where they need to be. At the end of this month and the start of next month, we get to get back in the gym with them. We'll start talking about goals for them and roadblocks. Then we get going with our non-conference slate.
