Given everything she had already accomplished, you could forgive volleyball star Madisen Skinner if she wanted to hang it up after graduation.
The 6'2" 23-year-old won three national championships in college—one with the Kentucky Wildcats and two more with the Texas Longhorns—all while earning three AVCA All-American team designations, the 2024 Honda Sports Award for Volleyball and the 2023–24 Big 12 Female Athlete of the Year award, among other impressive accolades. She currently boasts 174,000 followers on Instagram and 162,000 on TikTok—enough to rival even your favorite influencer—and counts Nike volleyball, Red Bull, and H-E-B supermarket among her partnerships. In a further sign of her rising star power, she even debuted her own Madisen Skinner app in November, making it easier for dedicated fans to keep up with her career and personal life.
Despite that offramp, however, the Katy, Texas, native decided to take her talents pro, joining a few of her former Texas teammates at the Austin-based branch of League One Volleyball (LOVB, pronounced “love”), an intergenerational pro and club-level upstart currently nearing the end of its inaugural season.
Ahead of the league finals running April 10, 11, and 13, Skinner sat down with Sports Illustrated to discuss a wide range of topics, including her first season as a pro, her relationship with social media, the growth of women’s volleyball and more.
Editor’s note: This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sports Illustrated: How has your transition from NCAA to pro volleyball gone? What has stood out to you as notably different or maybe surprisingly the same?
Madisen Skinner: The transition has been good overall. It’s definitely a jump. It’s just so different being around girls who have been playing the game for a really long time. You’re the small fish in the big pond again. So I think the biggest difference has been trying to find my role in that space and also find my voice while being a sponge and picking up as much information from the older girls as possible.
I would also say switching and transitioning to the right side has been a big adjustment for me, personally. That was a decision that was made over a long period as I tried to figure out where I wanted to take this sport and be the most successful. So the position change along with the switch to pro and going straight into competition has been an adjustment, but I’ve loved it. And I’ve learned so much.
When it comes to things that have stayed the same, I’m playing with my old teammates, so that’s all familiar territory.
SI: What are you enjoying about LOVB so far?
MS: I just love the community. I know a lot of girls that play in the league, and I feel like having that community of girls we are competitors with but also can get along with and see frequently is really nice. Also, the way League One is impacting clubs. My younger sister is at one of the LOVB clubs, so to see her and see all the girls that come out to our games and support us is really, really awesome. We’ve been trying to bridge that gap for so long, but it’s really hard when you don't have an opportunity to play in the States so younger players can physically see the eventual path to pro. But overall, I would say the community with the girls alongside the community with the clubs and how we've been able to connect with them has been awesome.
SI: What drew you to joining this particular league?
MS: I knew I wanted to be close to home. I wasn’t quite ready for the overseas transition, especially since I was graduating in December, and that's just such a fast turnaround. But I would say the people honestly did it for me, and knowing what they're trying to accomplish by giving girls an opportunity to play here and stay home is really important to me. And like I said, I just love inspiring the next generation. To see people like my sister and girls that have been following me at Texas is really awesome. And I obviously love being close to my family. I'm in Austin, the same place I’ve been in the past few years. So that part of it was easy.
SI: What has it been like playing with seasoned volleyball royalty? And what have you learned?
MS: I’ve learned a lot of technical stuff, volleyball-wise. We have four opposites on our team, so that's been super nice. They’ve been able to watch me and give me feedback and encourage me.
Then also the mental side of it, as well. I think a lot of the girls that I’ve talked to who have gone straight from college ball to pro have experienced this burnout phase, ... There’s a lot of pressure, and there’s an expectation to win. And so balancing our new life and not having school, not having those social gatherings that we're used to going to every single weekend with Texas Athletics, we have to find other ways to reset ourselves. And all the veteran players have been through that at some point. The common consensus is that this year is one of the hardest, so to have them walk me through this new journey and this new chapter has been very helpful.
SI: How has the growth of women’s volleyball manifested itself for you specifically? In what ways have you witnessed the explosion in the past few years?
MS: I definitely feel like it was more towards the tail end of my collegiate time. It’s been growing over the years, but I feel like my sophomore into my junior year was when we really started to see a bunch of people watching us online. When you go to Texas and you’re wearing a Longhorn across your chest, that’s another level of exposure. But the turnout that we had at our games and our matches when we would travel was the big moment I realized it was getting big. I’d be walking out in public, and people would be like, “Do you play volleyball?” Normally it was just, “Do you play basketball?”
It’s the No. 1 participation sport for young girls, so to have people walk up to me and know I’m a volleyball player, I’m like, “Yes, I am! And you should tune into our next match!" It’s really cool to see. But I would honestly say the biggest way it changed was the viewership and people showing out.
SI: You have a known social media presence off the court. What does that bring to you? Do you treat it as an outlet? Or is it more of a business decision to some degree?
MS: For the most part, it’s more just for my enjoyment and as an outlet. And I’ve kind of wanted to keep it that way. I’ve always loved social media. I love being able to put content out and consume other people’s content that I relate to. I definitely feel like I could use it as a business tool and have this rigorous posting schedule, but I think, for me, I genuinely enjoy doing it, and I don’t want it to ever get to the point where it feels like a job, or it feels like it’s too posed or too serious. It’s really just something that I enjoy doing, and I want to try to keep it that way for as long as possible.
SI: You were interested in a variety of sports growing up—dance, gymnastics, and soccer to name a few. What do you love about volleyball, and why did this game in particular draw you in?
MS: How much of a team sport it is. What I do and how I play the game is dependent on what the person before me does, so it keeps me on my toes. I never know what to expect. There’s never one rally that's going to be the same as the next. And so I love how you really need every single person on the team. Whether they’re on the bench or on the floor, it plays such a huge role in our game. For me, that’s what kept me hooked. It’s the epitome of a team sport.
SI: Who do you look up to?
MS: My older sister, Avery Skinner. She’s a couple of steps ahead of me, and she’s always doing the next big thing. She went professional, she has a lot of accolades, she’s an Olympian ... she has done all the things that I want to do. So I have someone go before me that I can try to model, and also, she’s my best friend. I learned so much from her as a human and off the court. It's really inspirational for me. I always have something that I'm working towards, but to know that what I'm working towards is possible, and I’m literally watching her do it, is so cool.
SI: Are there other female athletes that inspire you or that you love to follow?
MS: There are a lot. I love watching gymnastics, so Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles are easy picks. Suni Lee, too. And I love watching Serena Williams. Volleyball-wise, one of the people I look up to the most would be Paola Egonu. And I would say Bella Hawk is another inspiration for me. Just their physicality and the way they play the game. Their IQ is crazy and they’re so smart and I love being able to watch them and learn from them.
And Juju Watkins, too. Unfortunately, she’s out for a little bit, but just the way that she competes and her fire and her energy are really cool to see. We need more of that—women being able to express their personalities when they play. I don’t like to compare it to the men, but I feel like it’s definitely a great trend to see girls compete hard and give it all they have. The fire that they bring to the game is what keeps people engaged.
SI: You have been open about your struggles with mental health before. How have you been keeping your mind right in such a transitory time?
MS: It’s the importance of finding things outside of your sport that bring you joy, and not letting your identity, your worth and the way that you talk to yourself be tied up with your performance. My faith is a big part of that. I know not everyone has faith and is religious in that sense, but that’s truly the reason why I'm still playing a sport. I would have quit a long time ago because this is hard. And if I am not playing for a bigger purpose and there’s no other reason I’m out here, whether it is trying to inspire young girls or lead other people to Christ, I would not be playing the sport. So for me, that’s my number one thing.
But also I’m a big advocate for positive self-talk. The way that you can talk to yourself has such an impact. This sounds really weird, but at one point, I made a highlight reel of myself. This was back when I had transferred to Texas. I think it was the middle of my sophomore year, towards the end of it, and I was in such a mental and physical rut. I was wailing balls out of bounds. I couldn’t pass. It was just awful and very scary, because I’m like, “Where did all of my skills go?” I’ve been training for so long and they’re just out the window. But I made a highlight reel of myself and I watched it every single day, before practice and before games, just to remind myself that I’m capable of doing these things and I'm capable of being successful on the court.
SI: What are you excited about with LOVB finals approaching?
MS: We’ve had an interesting season this year. We’ve gone through a lot of change and growth, and we’ve taken a lot of losses. But I think overall, we have learned so much about ourselves as athletes and as a team. Going into finals, the awesome thing is everyone has a shot at it, and it’s not dependent on your record. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve won or lost; everyone still has the same chance to go and win the whole thing. So I think that’s keeping us very optimistic and excited about the tournament. Also just being in Louisville, too. That’s a big volleyball city—they’ve had a couple of national championships there—and I’m expecting the fan turnout to be really awesome.
SI: In your opinion, why do you think volleyball is speaking to a new generation of female athletes?
MS: Oh my gosh, I don’t know. I feel like it’s one sport that hasn't been fully explored yet, if that makes sense. We have basketball; girls have been playing it for ages. The WNBA has been established for a long time. Volleyball is something that has obviously been around, but it’s new. And more people are playing it, and more people are watching it, and it’s on TV way more than it ever was. I also feel like you can take the game in whatever way you want. It’s very feminine in a sense. We have girls that wear really cool makeup, or they do their hair in slicked-back buns, or bows, or cute hair ties.
Otherwise, I can only think of why I was drawn to the sport, and it was just that it’s different. There’s a team element to it. It’s challenging. Nothing’s ever the same. You’re always expected to react in a different way. That’s why I fell in love with it. I would assume it would be somewhat similar to why people like it now, though I do think that the coverage and the exposure have made a big difference.
SI: Now that you’ve made the leap from college to pro, what advice would you give someone about to do the same thing?
This article was originally published on www.si.com as LOVB Austin’s Madisen Skinner Is Embracing the Spotlight as One of the League’s Top Rookies.
