GAINESVILLE, Fla. – She’d just pummeled a kill to put her team on the brink of an rousing, emotional defeat of powerhouse Pittsburgh. Florida outside hitter Jordyn Byrd was feeling it and as her fired up teammates huddled in preparation of their first match point of the season that fire spewed from Byrd’s mouth. 
 
“I looked at every single one of them and said, ‘I don’t care what you do, just cover me!’ ” Byrd recalled of the moment. “I was swinging, no matter what.” 
 
And swing she did. Mightily. Forcefully. Victoriously. 
 
Like the point before, setter extraordinaire Alexis Stucky assisted the 6-foot-4 Byrd perfectly for a slam-dunk, slam-the-door kill that clinched an improbable rally and five-set win over the third-ranked Panthers in last weekend’s AVCA First Serve Showcase before a sellout crowd at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska.
 
It made for quite a start to UF’s 2025 volleyball season, which was a milestone all its own as the first under Coach Ryan Theis, who took over last January when Gators icon Mary Wise, the longest tenured coach (any sport) in school history and with nearly a thousand victories, retired after 34 seasons. Florida opened the night before with a four-set loss to No. 6 Stanford, so gathering itself to get out of the premium event with a triumph over a national-title contender was a huge jolt of momentum, not to mention a sign of resiliency under new management.
 
The Panthers won two of the first three games, had both a four-point lead and match point in Game 4, but the Gators proved undeterred in fashioning the comeback. 
 

QUEEN 👑 @JordynByrd_14

AVCA Player of the Game!!!#GoGators | @AVCAVolleyball pic.twitter.com/GPdFniZosb

— Gators Volleyball (@GatorsVB) August 24, 2025

“Every season, there are going to bumps and bruises along the way,” Theis said. “But hopefully we learned that our character is such that we can compete when we’re down – even two sets and facing match point – and still win in five.”
 
They also learned (more like confirmed) what they have in Byrd, the transfer from Texas whose road to Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center, where Theis and the 16^th-ranked Gators (1-1) will make their ’25 home debut Sunday afternoon against Norfolk State (0-0), all the more perplexing, yet all the more rewarding for her new team.
 
“This year is my year to get a feel for everything and prove some of the people wrong who didn’t believe in me before,” Byrd said Tuesday night after UF’s 3-0 exhibition defeat of PVK Olymp Praha, a club team from Czech Republic. “That was my mindset coming in. That I had nothing to lose and to just go out, be aggressive, swing as many times as I can and see what happens.”
 
Really good things happened for the Gators and Byrd, who against Pitt – and 2024 National Player of the Year Olivia Babcock on the other side of the net – tallied a team-high 23 kills, three blocks, two digs and an assist in just the second match of her three-year career. Repeat: her second match; in three seasons. 
 
That’s because in her two previous seasons at Texas she never saw the floor. 
 
At all. 
 
Byrd, a two-time Gatorade Player of the Year out of Sarasota Cardinal Mooney, chose Texas, the reigning NCAA champion, over her home state flagship school when she signed in 2022. As a true freshman in ’23, Byrd sat out the season as a medical redshirt with a foot injury, watching the Longhorns win a second straight national title (in Tampa, no less). 
 
But healthy in ’24, Byrd did not play in any of UT’s matches – 27 DNP/Coaches Decisions – and went into the transfer portal at season’s end. She was well acquainted with just about everything about UF, especially the coaches, and opted to return home. Two weeks into the spring semester, though, Wise announced her retirement, turning college volleyball on its head. Momentarily. 
 
“I lot of things went through my mind,” Byrd said. “I was like, ‘Oh boy, what now?’ ”

Answer: Theis, by way of Marquette, but also with two years on his resume as an assistant for Wise. He and Wise had some similarities, at least relative to system and culture, and the transition went relatively smoothly, especially after the players got in the gym and began to get acquainted with the new regime. 
 
Theis and his staff, for their part, knew very little about Byrd, but didn’t need much time to figure out what they had. 
 
“I knew she was ridiculous point of contact on swing and an unbelievable physical presence,” he said. “That was about it.”
 
That was good enough. 
 
Byrd, who after spending a whole season as a spectator admittedly arrived at Florida with some confidence issues, began to blossom as both a player and person. 
 
“When you see her, she’s such a physical presence that there is a level of intimidation, even talking to her as a person,” Theis said. “My second day, she comes into my office and is this unbelievably bubbly personality that is just a joy to be around. I don’t think people know that. They see her competing, blocking someone and maybe sticking a finger out, so you just get this different vibe from her. But she’s a fun-loving kid who appreciates affection, communication and joy in speaking. I think we have a good chemistry with that. I trust her and I think she works hard for me.”
 
The change in venue, perhaps, was exactly what she needed.

“When you go in the gym every single day and you’re working hard and get compliments from certain people it becomes like, ‘OK, what is it that I’m not doing?’ There were opportunities others were getting and I wasn’t,” Byrd said of her time at Texas. “The frustration was knowing I was busting my butt every day and not getting those opportunities. But going into this year I had in the back of my head that I’d finally get those opportunities and I was going to take advantage of that.”
 
In the matches against Stanford and Pitt, when she combined to post a team highs of 42.5 points and 40 kills to go with five blocks (second-best), were the first of what will be a season’s worth of opportunities. It’s now apparent that Byrd, with her ability to score points in bunches, figures prominently in the team’s plans. 
 
“Hitter connections develop throughout the year. It starts at the beginning and only goes up,” sophomore setter Taylor Parks said. “The more balls you’re setting for her, the better the connection. That girl has a really high ceiling. She is just such a physical player and so much fun to set.”
 
Translation: Byrd need not worry about telling her teammates to cover her anymore. 

They know she’s swinging, no matter what. 

 

“The Pitt game showed the hard work and what we’ve done in practice, but also showed everybody what the coaches have done and how they prepared us for that game, for this season,” Byrd said. “Everyone knows losing Mary was a big thing, but Ryan came in and has shown us that he’s willing to step into those big shoes. He’s poured everything into us and now we’re pouring everything into him.”

 

Email senior writer Chris Harry at chrish@gators.ufl.edu