Sophomore outside hitter Cari Spears finished her freshman season in spectacular fashion in 2025.
Spears earned third team All-American and first team All-Southeastern Conference honors for her play. She finished with 358 kills and 51 blocks.
Entering 2026, Spears was projected to be a second option as an offensive threat alongside senior outside hitter Torrey Stafford. For most of the season, Spears has been just that, providing a steady presence alongside Stafford and freshman outside hitter Henley Anderson.
But Spears’ impact was on most prominent display when she was not playing at her best. In a three-game stretch against unranked Arkansas, Oklahoma and Auburn, Spears’ play was well below what Texas fans have come to expect, and the team’s offense suffered.
Spears recorded 12 total kills across three games, hitting below .100 in two out of three games. Her worst performance came in a devastating loss to Oklahoma, where Spears had one kill on 11 attacks, hitting -.091 as the Longhorns were taken apart in three sets.
The Longhorns need Spears to perform to the best of her ability to continue their push toward the postseason, and they got just that against Florida. In the five-set loss, Spears had 13 kills and paired with Stafford to push No. 7 Florida to the edge before falling in five sets.
“She’s been feeling better,” Stafford said. “I knew she was going to show up for this big match.”
Despite strong performances through her first two years of college, Spears can still develop as a player. She has shown flashes of outside defense that could make her a two-way threat, having three or more blocks in six games this season. Offensively, Spears can still open up new paths to attack the defense, specifically from the middle of the court.
“We need to keep developing her middle range,” head coach Jerritt Elliott said. “At the end there, we weren’t able to score when the set was coming off the net. Challenging, but we’ll get there.”
Spears was utilized in a different way in Sunday’s game against Florida, rotating in and out with sophomore outside hitter Addy Gaido. This allowed Texas to keep Spears away from what has been her biggest question mark this season: the service line. Spears leads the team with 43 of Texas’ 191 service errors this season, bleeding points the most on a team that has spoken at length about wanting to avoid unforced mistakes.
Despite that, Spears also leads the team in service aces with 17. In the new rotation, it appears Elliott is taking a stance towards moving away from those lost points, especially in close games against top-ranked competition like Florida.
Texas enters its last seven regular-season games with a 9–7 record and a need to fix a plethora of small issues before postseason action. One of the Longhorns’ glaring questions lies in offensive consistency.
If Spears is able to find her groove again, Texas will be able to go into the end of its season with a better chance to make a run.
