Summer had arrived, and Jesse Mahoney had every reason to be stoked for the coming months.
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Mahoney’s Colorado volleyball program was coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance, and the bulk of that rotation was set to return to campus in just a few months. There was just one problem. And it wasn’t a small one.
Even with the days growing longer, CU’s glaring void at the setter spot wasn’t getting any smaller.
A timely call to a well-placed colleague fixed that setter problem and set the stage for Jenna Ylivainio’s arrival in Boulder.
The setter from Finland has fit in seamlessly as the new cog in a core rotation that has played together for multiple seasons. Ylivainio taking care of the Buffaloes’ lone preseason question mark is a big reason why the 25th-ranked Buffs are eyeing a return trip to the NCAA Tournament, as CU (12-4, 3-3 Big 12) gets set to visit Iowa State for a conference battle on Thursday night (5:30 p.m. MT, ESPN+).
“We felt like setter was a position that we needed some experience at, given the experience that we had everywhere else in our starting lineup,” Mahoney said. “We spent some time in the portal. Recruited several portal players but didn’t really find what we needed. Then we started looking at some international players.”
Still searching for a replacement for last year’s setter, Rian Finley, Mahoney placed a call to Saana Koljonen. Koljonen spent the 2019 season as a volunteer assistant on Mahoney’s staff, and she’s a native of Finland who once played on the country’s national team.
Koljonen gave Mahoney the names of six potential setters. One was Ylivainio.
Convincing Ylivainio that NCAA volleyball was a viable route was the next challenge. Also a Finnish national team member, Ylivainio had been playing professionally in Finland and Belgium, and had never considered America as an option. She’d never even been to the United States, but immediately was intrigued by Mahoney’s offer.
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“When I heard I had the opportunity to come here, I didn’t think a lot,” Ylivainio said. “When I saw the team, and also the city of Boulder, I didn’t think about looking at another (school).”
Getting international athletes cleared for school and the NCAA is a time-consuming process that had to be expedited. Ylivainio arrived just weeks before the start of preseason practice, and Mahoney said her student visa literally arrived at the buzzer just a few hours in front of Ylivainio’s scheduled flight out of Finland.
“She was excited pretty quickly and excited for the challenge of something different,” Mahoney said. “She’s been fantastic for us. Obviously as a volleyball player, then as a bonus she’s just a great person. She’s the new kid in the group, but she’s the oldest in the group. She’s 23 years old and has played in a lot of different scenarios, different countries, different coaches, different groups. I don’t think there’s anything we could’ve thrown at her that would’ve freaked her out in any way. She’s very calm, very professional.”
Ylivainio hasn’t performed like a player who was introduced to her new teammates just a few weeks before the first match. Ylivainio has posted three 50-assist games, and also had 46 on Sunday while matching a season-high with three kills as CU completed a victorious reverse sweep against Kansas State.
Ylivainio began the week ranked fifth in the Big 12 with 9.51 assists per set. Volleyball has proven to be the easy part of going back to school in a new country.
“Settling in with the team has been easy,” said Ylivainio, who has one more year of eligibility after this season. “I feel like everybody was a family already. The biggest adjustment was doing school in person. I haven’t done that in a while. But this city is so pretty and there’s a lot of things to do outside of volleyball.”
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