Mimi Colyer ‘can score as well as anybody in the world,’ Kelly Sheffield says
Why Wisconsin Badgers were best choice for Mimi Colyer in portal
Mimi Colyer has been elite for the Badgers after transferring from Oregon. Coming to UW was the ‘absolute best decision I’ve ever made in my life.’
- Mimi Colyer, a transfer from Oregon, is on pace to break Wisconsin’s program record for kills per set.
- Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield has said that Colyer “can score as well as anybody in the world.”
- Colyer has said that “coming to Wisconsin was the absolute best decision I’ve ever made in my life.”
MADISON — Mimi Colyer has “asserted myself as a Midwesterner.”
Just take the first snow storm as an example as the Wisconsin volleyball star outside hitter told her mother not to worry.
“I just go slow, and I pump the brakes,” Colyer remembers saying. “That’s how you do it.”
“OK,” Colyer recalled her mother saying with a skeptical tone. “Drive really slow.”
“No, I’m basically from here,” Colyer said.
Colyer — actually a native of Lincoln, California, which is just north of Sacramento — might as well be right at home with the way she has thrived in her lone season with the Badgers after transferring from Oregon.
Heading into the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, the 6-foot-3 outside hitter is at pace to shatter Wisconsin’s program record for kills per set.
She is at 5.32, and the record in the 25-point rally scoring era is Sarah Franklin’s 4.46 kills per set in 2024. Even when looking at previous scoring eras, Colyer is above Sherisa Livingston’s 5.19 kills per set in 2000 in the sideout scoring era.
Colyer is one of 14 semifinalists for AVCA national player of the year — the award that past UW great Sarah Franklin won in 2023. Colyer ranks third in the country in kills per set, and the two people ahead of her are on teams that have already been eliminated.
“Has she exceeded our expectations?” Sheffield said. “No, because we thought she was a player-of-the-year type of athlete. But she’s proven everything that we’ve hoped we were going to get out of her.”
Yes, Sheffield believed in her potential, and Colyer obviously did too.
“But it’s one thing to believe and to think, and it’s another thing to go out there and do,” Sheffield said. “And she keeps raising the bar.”
The areas that were not necessarily strengths for Colyer heading into the season — serve-receive, for example — have been areas of growth in her lone season working with Sheffield’s staff.
“The biggest question, I would say, with her game coming into this senior season was her first contact,” Sheffield said late in the regular season. “Whether it was passing or defensively, I think she’s answered both of those. She’s put the work in where she can be really good at that.”
Colyer hit .344 in UW’s 10 matches in August or September. That dropped to .283 in October, which coincided with setter Charlie Fuerbringer’s injury absence. But since November, Colyer has been playing at an especially elite level.
Colyer has hit .395 and averaged 5.57 kills per set in UW’s November and December matches. She has finished with 20-plus kills in six of those 11 matches. Most notably, she had 23 kills without any attack errors on Nov. 23 against Iowa — “video game numbers” — with Sheffield making sure Colyer had a stat sheet to keep from the historic performance.
“Your ability to score is everything for a pin hitter, and she can score as well as about anybody in the world,” Sheffield said. “She puts up a block. If she was on our national team right now, she’d be the best left-side blocker probably. That’s one of her elite skills.”
That month of November also came with the highlight of being the top-overall pick in the Major League Volleyball draft. Her future coach with the Dallas Pulse, Shannon Winzer, told the Journal Sentinel that the Colyer selection was a “no-brainer.”
“If she decides that she wants to be one of the best players in the world, she could do that,” Sheffield said in a press conference shortly after her MLV draft selection.
Colyer, of course, has a postseason run to finish first with the Badgers — one that caps off a season with more joy for her and the team as a whole.
“It’s been really fun for me to see how much more exciting I’ve been to watch play this season,” Colyer said. “I think I’m a lot more joyful on the court. … This group really brings it out of me.”
Wisconsin has reached the NCAA regional semifinals for the 13th time in Sheffield’s 13 seasons at the helm in Madison. Colyer will surely be one of the keys for the Badgers to go farther in a regional stacked with second-seeded Stanford and top-seeded Texas — two of the top five teams in the Dec. 1 coaches poll.
“You can’t go far in this tournament without having at least one aircraft carrier,” Sheffield said. “And she is that. And we’ve been fortunate to have some in the past. She’s as good as anybody we have had.”
A deep postseason run is “what we strive for each and every day,” Colyer said ahead of the first weekend of the tournament. But even if the Badgers cannot advance any farther in the NCAA tournament, Colyer already has said that “coming to Wisconsin was the absolute best decision I’ve ever made in my life.”
“I was just talking to my mom about this recently,” Colyer said. “I don’t know if coming to Wisconsin my freshman year — being that far away from home and my family, we’re all on the West Coast — I don’t think this would have been the best place for my freshman year.”
But now, Colyer is an improved volleyball player — and an improved driver in snow.
