On Thursday night, the nation’s last four teams still in the running for the 2019 national championship will take the floor of Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena. Twenty-five of the players competing in Thursday’s Final Four share a special bond: they were all First Team Under Armour All-Americans as high school seniors. 

Stanford leads the way with eight former Under Armour first-teamers on its roster. Wisconsin and Minnesota each have seven, and Baylor boasts three. The high concentration of First Team Under Armour All-Americans in the NCAA national semifinals just goes to show how prestigious this designation is.

Want to see the stars of tomorrow in action and be able to say you say them play before they became big-time? Tune in to watch the 2019 Under Armour High School All-America Match on Dec. 31, streaming right here on FloVolleyball. 

Check out the early round games from the NCAA Tournament!

Stanford

Among the nine players who see significant playing time in the Cardinal’s current lineup, five were First Team All-Americans. Seniors opposite Audriana Fitzmorris, setter Jenna Gray, libero Morgan Hentz, and outside hitter Kathryn Plummer were all honored together in 2015, the year before they arrived at the Farm as the No. 1 recruiting class in the country. This fivesome boasts two national championships (2016 & 2018), and Plummer is a two-time national player of the year. Gray and Hentz just received 2019 First Team All-America honors from the AVCA.

Sophomore middle Holly Campbell earned top high school All-America honors in 2017. The Texas native played a huge role in Stanford’s title a year ago, scoring 15 kills in the final, second on the team only to Plummer.

Freshman outside hitter Kendall Kipp was named Team West MVP at last year’s Under Armour All-America Match, and in her first college season, she stepped up big when Plummer had to sit out due to injury. Unfortunately, Kipp suffered an injury of her own and hasn’t played a major role in a match since Oct. 27’s five-set win over USC.

Amazingly, Stanford even has two former Under Armour first teamers who haven’t cracked the starting lineup. 2018 All-American Caitie Barid has yet to play a single point (likely planning to redshirt), and Natalie Berty had appeared in just three matches. Her debut, however, was incredibly impressive—an eight-kill-zero-error (.800) performance against Oregon State on Nov. 1. 

Wisconsin

Three of Wisconsin’s current freshman played in the Under Armour All-America Match a year ago, but the Badger squad has such experience and so many returning starters that only one has earned any serious playing time. Izzy Ashburn, who is a top candidate to take over setting duties after current starter Sydney Hilley graduates, has played a serving specialist role this fall, and you’d have to say she’s absolutely killed it. With 45 aces, she leads the team and ranked second in the Big Ten with 0.41 aces per set.

Ashburn’s fellow 2018 All-American libero Anna MacDonald has only appeared in five sets, while middle Courtney Gorum has not played at all (again, likely redshirting). 

The Badgers had two players on the 2016 First Team list: the aforementioned setter Hilley and starting outside hitter Grace Loberg. Loberg currently ranks third on the team with 343 kills, while Hilley quarterbacked her team to the sixth-best hitting percentage (.295) in the country and is a newly crowned 2019 AVCA First Team All-American.

Top outside hitter Molly Haggerty appeared on the Under Armour first team in 2015, while opposite Madison Duello, a redshirt senior, is the only member of the 2014 Under Armour First Team All-America group to be playing in this week’s Final Four. 

Minnesota 

Six of Minnesota’s seven starters have “Under Armour First Team All-American” somewhere in their bios. Start with kills leader Stephanie Samedy, who became the first Gopher to earn First Team AVCA All-America honors as a college freshman in 2017. Or how about starting setter Kylie Miller, who spent her first three years of college at UCLA, and then transferred to Minnesota ahead of the 2019 season. 

Don’t forget senior Alexis Hart, who has been a rock in the Gopher lineup since her freshman year. Llibero CC McGraw and outside hitter Adanna Rollins, both sophomores, were honored by Under Armour in 2017. 

And then there’s Regan Pittman, the redshirt junior middle blocker, who was on the Under Armour squad with Hart and Miller in 2015 and just this week became the only Gopher to earn 2019 AVCA First Team All-America honors. She leads the team with 164 total blocks—ninth among all players in Division I.

Freshman Shea Rubright, a 2018 Under Armour All-American, has played only sparingly in her debut NCAA season, but with current starting middle Taylor Morgan graduating after this year and Pittman with just one year of eligibility remaining, look for her to play a key role on future Gopher squads.

Baylor

Baylor has just three first team high school All-Americans on its roster, but what the Bears lack in quantity, they might just make up for in quality. 

Yossiana Pressley, by all accounts the frontrunner for the 2019 National Player of the Year award, has 521 kills to date in the 2019 season, and with 5.37 kills per set, she’s No. 2 among all Division I players, something that not many would have predicted way back in 2016 when she was an Under Armour First Teamer, but not ranked in the top 10 or even top 15 recruits in the class.

When Gia Milana played in the Under Armour Match in 2015, she was the best player ever to commit to Maryland. After two seasons in College Park, she transferred to Baylor where she’s established herself as the second starting outside hitter. 

Finally, Baylor’s freshman Kara McGhee was playing in the high school All-America match just a year ago, but today she is one of Baylor’s key pieces. Four times in the regular season, the Big 12 honored her with weekly awards (two rookie of the weeks and two defensive player of the weeks). She then earned Second Team All-Big 12, and she enters Thursday’s semifinals as the team’s top blocker (132 total blocks, 1.33 per set).

Here’s the complete list of former First Team Under Armour High School All-Americans on the final four teams, sorted by year:

2018

Izzy Ashburn, Wisconsin

Caitie Baird, Stanford

Natalie Berty, Stanford

Courtney Gorum, Wisconsin

Kendall Kipp, Stanford

Anna MacDonald, Wisconsin

Kara McGhee, Baylor

Shea Rubright, Minnesota

2017

Holly Campbell, Stanford

CC McGraw, Minnesota

Adanna Rollins, Minnesota

2016

Sydney Hilley, Wisconsin

Grace Loberg, Wisconsin

Yossiana Pressley, Baylor

Stephanie Samedy, Minnesota

2015

Audriana Fitzmorris, Stanford

Jenna Gray, Stanford

Molly Haggerty, Wisconsin

Alexis Hart, Minnesota

Morgan Hentz, Stanford

Regan Pittman, Minnesota

Kathryn Plummer, Stanford

Gia Milana, Baylor

Kylie Miller, Minnesota

2014

Madison Duello, Wisconsin