After the end of last season, the Cougars lost three middle blockers. They lost Camyrn Lingenbrink and Keniya Cleveland to graduation and Ziah Sneva to the transfer portal. This left Lucie Blažková and Lauren Johnson as the only returning middle blockers.
WSU addressed the issue by picking up Naomi White through the transfer portal. White is transferring as a true senior after spending the past three seasons at Portland State University.
This past season, she was one of two players on the Vikings who played all 28 matches and 112 sets. She recorded 189 kills while hitting .342, the highest on the team and tied for the fifth-highest in the Big Sky Conference. Defensively, she had 117 blocks, only four fewer than Blažková had this year. The Vikings finished the season 11–17 and lost in the first round of the Big Sky Volleyball Championship.
In White’s sophomore season, she also played in every match (28) and set (99). In total, she recorded 194 kills while hitting .330, the fifth-highest in the conference. Defensively, she had 103 total blocks and 1.04 blocks per set, ninth-best in the conference. The Vikings ended the year 8–20 and were one-and-dones in the Big Sky Volleyball Championship.
In her freshman year, she did not receive significant playing time, only appearing in three matches. In her three years at Portland State, she did not receive any Big Sky Conference end-of-season accolades.
White has a solid chance of replacing the role Lingenbrink played last season. Similar to White, Lingenbrink played her fourth year at WSU after playing her first three at a different school, the University of Tulsa. Lingenbrink went on to play in all 28 of the Cougars’ matches, recording 134 kills, hitting .318 and getting 83 total blocks.
As a senior, White will contribute with her leadership in the locker room. She and new addition Chloe Heimlicher, thus far, are the only true seniors set to play for the Cougs in 2026. They are likely to be leaders for the group of at least five underclassmen the Cougars are set to have in the fall.
“Naomi is a great athlete [who] has made great strides in her [skill sets] in the past three seasons. She is another player [who] brings a lot of experience playing for a competitive program and grew in each of her seasons at Portland State. Naomi is a dynamic middle and consistently impacts the game, both offensively [and] defensively,” head coach Korey Schroeder said about White in a statement posted on the WSU Athletics website.
