Ready, set, Kate

Just over a month ago, first-year setter Kate Lijić arrived in the United States for the first time, marking a transformative shift in her personal life and athletic career. Lijić has been a key player for the Croatia women’s national volleyball team throughout her teenage years. She now has the advantage of joining USU’s program alongside her fellow Croatian teammate, first-year outside hitter Mara Štiglic.

Born in Split, Croatia, Lijić appreciates her hometown’s stunning coastal beauty and vibrant urban culture. The water of the surrounding Adriatic Sea has a stunning clear blue hue and is home to a diverse range of wildlife.

“I really love swimming, and we don’t have sharks in Croatia, so it’s beautiful,” Lijić said. “The city is very beautiful, and we have a lot of tourists every summer.”

Swimming was Lijić’s first love as a young athlete, a popular sport for young Croatians, but by the age of seven, her mother’s athletic career inspired her to pick up a volleyball for the first time.

“[My mother] was a handball player, and I always had fun playing sports with a ball,” Lijić said. “That’s why I thought that volleyball was the best sport for me.”

Soon after she decided to pursue volleyball, Lijić joined the professional club OK Split, where she competed for 10 years. By the time she entered high school at 14, she was invited to join the youth Croatian national team, joining forces with the future Aggie Štiglic. 

Lijić’s international career transformed her into one of Croatia’s best young prospects. She led her team to first-place finishes in the Croatian national championships in U16, U18 and U20. Following the 2022 and 2023 Croatian championships, she was named the tournament’s best setter. Lijić also finished fourth in the 2023 World High School Beach Volleyball Championships in Israel.

Lijić could be one of head coach Rob Neilson’s most promising recruitments. Neilson first saw her play in a video shown to him by a friend who runs a recruiting service with players from Brazil and Eastern Europe looking to come to the U.S. 

This summer, Neilson traveled with a Mountain West all-star team that competed in the Global Challenge. The competition happened to take place in Pula, Croatia. As a build-up to the tournament, Neilson’s team had an opportunity to play the U19 Croatian National Team, a team in which Lijić and Štiglic were heavily featured. Neilson relied on one of his skills to recruit Croatia’s best young setter. 

“I served a mission in Croatia, so I think being able to speak a bit of their language helped,” Neilson explained via email. “We mostly talked about the success of our program, the resources they would have access to in training and the safety and support of an amazing Aggie Community.”

When Lijić committed to playing volleyball at Utah State, a conversation with her friend and teammate led to one of the more unique situations in American college sports. 

“I decided first to come here,” Lijić said. “And then I was like, ‘Mara, I’m going to USU, do you want to come with me?’ And we were talking about it and she said, ‘Yeah, why not?,’ and then she talked with our coach. So, we came here together.”

The Aggies now had two Croatian talents who had shared the court for many years and won consistently internationally. Soon after the team picked up Lijić and Štiglic, they signed another player in the Balkan region: Serbian outside hitter Andrea Simovski, who had a similar high school experience. She also played in a professional club for much of her childhood and won gold and bronze medals as a member of the Serbian National Team.

“We usually start playing volleyball much earlier than people here,” Simovski said. “It’s usually like nine, 10, seven, eight years. We also have that experience of playing professionally, which is a little different than here because we had to manage both school and volleyball.”

Unlike the American players, who play with support from the school, the players in Croatia and Serbia struggled to balance athletics and academics.

“Volleyball wasn’t something that school would necessarily support,” Simovski said. “Your teachers wouldn’t be supportive about you going on trips for volleyball, so we needed to choose between what we wanted to do.”

The fact that USU would allow their athletes to compete while also granting them a free education was a significant draw for Lijić and her international teammates. There is already a tight bond between the three of them that will serve them well. Lijić and Štiglic have built chemistry through their years of setting and spiking for one another, and Simovski speaks the same language as them, which has helped all three girls adjust to their major life transition.

“It’s nice to have someone who can talk your own language here because, at the end of the day, it’s really exhausting to not speak your first language the whole day,” Štiglic said. “I just feel weird when I need to talk to [Lijić] in English.”

The setter is often called the most critical position on the volleyball court. While setters don’t score many points throughout the season, they are responsible for giving their hitters accurate passes and keeping the opponent’s spikes in play. A hitter’s spikes will help a team win, but the setter’s pass will make that spike possible in the first place.

“First, I need to organize the game,” Lijić said. “Then I try to see the blockers on the other side. Then I need to know who is a player that is having a good day that day. If Mara has a good day, then I know that she’ll hit every ball. If she is not in the mood that day, then I’ll not set her.”

Štiglic couldn’t help but laugh at her teammate’s brutal honesty, but she agreed with the assessment. “Setter is mentally the toughest position because the rest of us have to focus on a few things, like what we have to do, what is our job. And she has to focus on those things, but also she has to pay attention to how the rest of us are doing along with the other team.”

Watching Lijić play, it’s easy to understand why she was considered Croatia’s best setter for the last couple of years. She can set in a stationary position but also on the move, and her height on these sets is relatively consistent. Defensively, she never quits on the play and has dived for bump sets on multiple occasions.

The Aggies have gotten off to a slow start this season, but the team is young and steadily improving game-to-game. First-year students in Lijić’s position would typically spend more time on the bench learning from their more experienced upperclassmen. She and her teammates have been thrown into the fire, learning to play a new style with new teammates and in a new environment.

“Everything is different,” Lijić said. “This system is different. Everyone is playing faster. And everyone talks a lot. We have great coaches. I think they’re doing a great job with us because we’re all new.”

She’s young, new to the country and adjusting to the American volleyball style. Still, Lijić is already gaining the respect of her coaches and teammates, and her confidence is only continuing to grow.

“She’s a smart player,” Simovski said. “She knows what she’s doing, especially as a setter. I think it’s a very important feature to have. She’s very reliable.”

No matter how things play out on the volleyball court for Lijić, she can rest easy knowing that she has the ideal support system around her. When it comes to her studies, she isn’t worried.

“School is pretty easy compared to Europe,” Lijić said. “High school in Europe is even harder than this college.”