When Kayla Burbage was growing up in North Carolina, she got tired of wearing thick softball pants in the Clayton summer heat pretty quickly. It’s what ended up propelling her to the indoor volleyball court.
Now a graduate student on the Illinois women’s volleyball team, Burbage is eagerly awaiting the 2025 season after spending last year recovering from a shoulder surgery. This season, she’s taking on a different role — middle blocking rather than hitting from the opposite side.
It was a change Illini head coach Chris Tamas made because Burbage’s return timeline was unclear.
“So about halfway through October, she jumped back into practice, and a long story short, started dominating everyone in the middle,” Tamas said Monday at Big Ten Volleyball Media Days in Chicago. “Sometimes you get some push back, because maybe you don't want to change [positions], right? We brought you here to be an opposite. And she looks at us like, ‘Yeah, I like this a lot.’ And if I can say with these kids here, you know, ‘LFG,’ so that's where we're at.”
As a junior in 2023, Burbage made 19 starts in 30 games played, was second on the team in kills per set (2.10) and third in total kills (223). She played her freshman season at Missouri and transferred to Illinois as a sophomore in 2022. Burbage is looking forward to getting back on the court with her team, even though it’s in a different position.
“The transition has been great. I played a little bit of middle back in club and high school days. So it's kind of like riding a bike in a way, like just getting right back into it. But I love it,” Burbage said. “I’ve always been more of a defensive-minded person, so being able to be back in that mindset has been awesome. Everything feels fluid and ready to go for the season, for sure.”
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Illinois finished last season No. 8 in the Big Ten, recording an 18-13 (10-10) overall record. This fall, the Fighting Illini are scheduled to face the newly reinstated Vanderbilt Commodores as their second game of the season, Aug. 31.