With the graduation of Nebraska outside hitter Kelsey Fien at the conclusion of the 2015 season in which the Huskers won the national championship, there was a position up for grabs in the Nebraska starting line-up. A position which was eventually filled by Andie Malloy, a transfer from Baylor.

The move to Nebraska was actually Malloy's second time transferring in her college career. After her freshman season, she left Iowa State for Baylor and sat out the 2013 season due to Big 12 transfer rules. Those same rules and restrictions forced her to look outside the conference for where to spend her final year of eligibility.

"I definitely feel like, given my situation, I need to leave it all out there and show what I can do as a player in the short amount of time that I'm here," Malloy said in an interview with the Omaha World Herald shortly after arriving at Nebraska.

"The girls love her," Nebraska head coach John Cook said in the same interview. "They say she fits in like she's been here a long time."

Malloy was forced to transfer the second time due to Big 12 regulations, but most athletes leave their first choice school because it wasn't the right fit. Until recruiting norms change and top athletes stop committing in their early teens, the transfer phenomenon is not going to slow down.

But perhaps that's not necessarily a bad thing. Transfers all around the country made major impacts this NCAA women's season. Wisconsin outside hitter Lauryn Gillis spent her freshman season at USC, and two UCLA starters, outside Jordan Anderson and libero Taylor Formico, ended up in Los Angeles after kicking off their collegiate careers at West Virginia and UC Santa Barbara, respectively.

Paulina Prieto Cerame was a top 10 recruit in her senior year at Palmer Trinity School in Miami, Florida. The San Juan, Puerto Rico, native committed to Penn State amid much fanfare but had to redshirt the 2012 season due to a stress fracture in her leg.

In 2013, Prieto Cerame played sparingly on the Nittany Lions squad that secured the national championship at the end of the season, but in the offseason that followed, she decided to transfer to Texas.

Three seasons later, Prieto Cerame has closed her college career as one of the Longhorns' star players. A second-team All-American, two-time All Big-12, and one of a trio of lethal pin hitters than led Texas all the way to the national championship match this year, Prieto Cerame seems to have made the right choice when she left Happy Valley.

Another one of those three lethal Texas pins? Ebony Nwanebu, who transferred from USC after a fantastic freshman season and a disappointing sophomore year. She struggled with injury as well as depression and anxiety.

In a blog post published on May 4, 2015, Nwanebu offered an explanation for her departure from USC. She committed to USC when she was 15.

"When I was 15, I had no clue what I was going to eat for dinner after I came home from school everyday, much less what I really wanted from life," she wrote.

At 19, she had discovered what she wanted wasn't at USC, but the injuries she was struggling with didn't disappear when she got to Texas. After leading the team with 22 kills versus Nebraska in the first match of 2015, Nwanebu sat out the remainder of the season and received a medical redshirt.

Finally, in 2016, Nwanebu regained the level of performance that earned her the AVCA National Freshman of the Year honors in 2013. She ranked third on the 2016 Longhorns team with 407 kills, hitting .384.

On the 2016 Nebraska team that made it to the national semifinal match against Texas, Malloy wasn't the only transfers to play a big role. Briana Holman, who transferred from Louisiana State after a first-team All-America sophomore season, had to watch from the sidelines as her new team won the national championship title in 2015 after not being granted a release from her scholarship by LSU. In 2016, however, she earned a starting spot and recorded 2.42 kills per set and 1.18 blocks per set with a team-best .350 hitting percentage.

Missouri, which won the SEC and made it to the Round of 16 in the NCAA tournament, relied on a whole slew of transfer athletes. Outside hitter Melanie Crow spent three years at Ole Miss, and setter Courtney Eckenrode's collegiate career began at San Diego State. Opposite Kira Larson and libero Alexa Ethridge were members of the same Nebraska recruiting class, and they both transferred to Missouri after the 2014 season.

Creighton setter Lydia Dimke earned Big East Player of the Year honors and led her team to the regional final of the NCAA tournament in only her first season with the Bluejays after transferring from Purdue.

With the 2016 season in the books, the transfer news will start rolling in any day now, and we'll get to start wondering, who will be the most impactful transfers of 2017?

All photos USA Today Sports.