The Utah Utes volleyball program on Monday got a transfer addition from a player who has already won an NCAA championship in one season at the collegiate level and was previously an elite high school player in Utah.
That player would be outside hitter Lauren Jardine, who starred at Lone Peak High before playing her college freshman year at Wisconsin, a national power the past 10 years or so that finally got over the hump in 2021 and won the national championship.
It's a GREAT day to be a Ute‼️
— Utah Volleyball (@UtahVolleyball) May 16, 2022
Very excited to announce @LaurenJardine10 will be returning home and joining our program 🙌
🗞️: https://t.co/zZD5fxRvB6 pic.twitter.com/0Vt5Dkg8S6
For the season, the 6-foot-2 Jardine appeared in 14 of 34 matches (one start and 24 total sets played) and tallied 45 kills, six digs and four blocks.
As a senior at Lone Peak in 2020, Jardine was named the Deseret News Ms. Volleyball among a slew of awards, and she was ranked No. 15 on the PrepVolleyball Top 150 list.
“We couldn’t be more pleased to have Lauren Jardine coming back to Utah to be a Ute,” said head coach Beth Launiere in a statement.
“She is an elite athlete with great work ethic, passion and drive. Her national championship experience at Wisconsin is an experience that many student-athletes won’t ever have, and the value cannot be measured.”
Jardine will be joining a Utah attack that will be undergoing some transition this fall. The program’s all-time kills leader, Dani Drews, graduated, as did Madelyn Robinson, who finished second on the team in the statistic in 2021 behind Drews and garnered All-Pac-12 honors after transferring from BYU.
The next three on the team — Zoe Weatherington, Amelia Van Der Werff and Allie Olsen — all finished with over 100 kills on the season and are primed to return in 2022 to a team that lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament to BYU.