Maya Sands Signs with LOVB Houston
12/17/2025 2:37:00 PM | Volleyball
Sands becomes the seventh player under head coach Dawn Sullivan to play professionally.
Mizzou volleyball's Maya Sands has signed a professional volleyball contract with League One Volleyball Houston (Houston, Texas) for the 2026 LOVB season.
Sands, a libero from Rock Falls, Ill., earned AVCA All-American third team honors and her third-consecutive SEC Libero of the Year award after appearing in all 109 sets during the 2025 season.
In her three years with the Tigers, Sands has posted a clean sweep of the Libero of the Year award, making her the lone MU student-athlete to claim it. Since the award was first established back in 2009, only players from five schools – Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, and Mizzou – have won the prize, and the Tigers are one of two schools to have won it more than twice – Kentucky.
The senior from Rock Falls, Illinois, ranked first during the conference slate with 274 digs (4.72 digs/set). Sands also recorded the highest number of digs in the SEC for a single game, as she set a new career high with 32 against South Carolina (10/24/25).
Sands started every set for the Tigers and paced the rest of the SEC by over 70 digs at the end of the regular season (494 digs, 4.75 digs/set) and ended her senior year with 511 digs and led the league with 4.69 digs per set.
The libero ended her career with 1,588 digs with the Tigers, ranking her third in program history. She finished with 4.64 digs per set in her three years, putting her first in program history.
In her career, she ended up with 2,000 career digs (4.41 digs/set), 436 assists (.96 assists/set) and 122 service aces (.27 SA/set). She was named an AVCA All-American third teamer in 2025 and H.M. in 2024, she is a three-time AVCA All-Region performer and is a three-time All-SEC honoree (2025; All-SEC second team, 2023-24; All-SEC first team).
She is now the seventh professional player for head coach Dawn Sullivan at Mizzou. Sands became the second player to sign with a professional team this year, as Caylen Alexander signed with Leonas de Ponce (Puerto Rico). Other Tigers that competed in the pro circuit include Naomi Franco (Hungary's Szent Benedek Röplabda Akademia), Dilara Gedikoglu (Shining Stars in Turkey), Mychael Vernon (Akademia Sant'Anna Messina in Italy), Kiaraliz Perez Catala (Puerto Rico's Las Changas de Naranjito) and Colleen Finney (A.O. Lamias in Greece) as Mizzou pro volleyball players.
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