ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Newberry Nurturing Her Love Of Volleyball In Successful Run At Lewis

By Rick Cassano

ROMEOVILLE, Ill. – The sport of volleyball remains a source of excitement and curiosity in the eyes of Sarah Newberry, even after all these years.

The 2023 Badin High School graduate said she started playing when she was 5 or 6 years old and her career has brought her to Lewis University in suburban Chicago, where she’s putting in the work to extend her playing days.

So what’s the appeal of volleyball to her?

“First off, I love the cheering on the court and off the court,” Newberry said. “I feel like you’re able to recognize every little thing because it’s just one point and then you have a break and you’re able to talk about it. Even just watching, I love the energy of the game and that it’s fast-paced.

“There’s also rallies that make it even more intriguing. I love how your lineup all fits together like a puzzle piece, and then there’s all the rotations. I like to think about it analytically in that way. I just think it’s all such a cool and fun game.”

If Newberry sounds like a coach, that’s because she already is a coach at the younger levels and wants to coach collegiately someday. But there is still much to do as a player.

The 6-foot senior is thriving at Lewis, an NCAA Division II school that’s been a player on the D-II national scene for a long time. The Flyers are 8-5 overall and 2-0 in the Great Lakes Valley Conference after sweeping visiting GLVC foes Quincy and Illinois Springfield last weekend at newly renovated Neil Carey Arena.

It was Mother/Daughter Weekend at Lewis, which is located about 35 miles southwest of Chicago, and Newberry’s mother Laurie was in attendance along with multiple other family members.

After contributing to last Saturday’s 3-1 triumph over UIS, Newberry mingled with her supporters and teammates before sitting for an interview.

“I’m very lucky. My family travels very well,” said Newberry, who will turn 22 in March. “My parents alternate weekends for games, and my grandparents go to whatever is drivable from Cincinnati. All my aunts and uncles live in Chicago, so I usually have one or two of them here for games.

“I knew I was going to end up at a Division II school, my mom’s from the Chicago area and I knew I wanted to be by family, so this kind of fit the bill for everything. It’s a competitive program and I also wanted it to not be a crazy drive from home, and I can definitely do this drive.”

Newberry’s stock continues to rise as a middle hitter. She was a second-team All-GLVC selection last year, and veteran Lewis coach Lorelee Smith said Newberry should set her bar even higher.

“I think All-American should be a goal of hers,” said Smith, noting that Newberry has great vision and is a thinker on the court. “She was all-conference last year and I think she was in the mix for all-region, and our team didn’t do that great. I think this year she should have All-American in her sights and then next year move up a team as an All-American. But our team has to do well in order for those things to go.”

Newberry leads the Flyers in kills (132) and total blocks (six solos, 43 assists). She’s also got 29 digs and 12 service aces.

Badin coach Courtney Weinheimer is not surprised by Newberry’s success at the next level. She said she’s never seen a more competitive kid in the gym.

“I can see her being an All-American because she works hard and has talent and wants to be the best,” Weinheimer said. “She’s definitely got a heavy arm and a quick arm swing, which is hard to defend. She has that clinical mind. She understands the game. She is super competitive and wants everyone around her to be super competitive.”

Newberry is the oldest of six children in her family and has one sister, Cadence, who will be a freshman at Badin next year. Weinheimer said the Newberry girls are volleyball junkies.

“They know everything about it and just want to learn more,” Weinheimer said. “It’s a quality that a coach wants every athlete to have.”

Weinheimer only coached Sarah Newberry for her senior season in 2022. The Rams went 27-2 that year, losing to Gates Mills Gilmour Academy in the Division II state semifinals. Badin lost its third match of the season at McNicholas, then ran off 25 consecutive victories.

Newberry was a middle hitter back then as well. The Rams ended up with four players – Newberry, Luci Heid, Alyvia Hegemann and Olivia Schmidt — between 197 and 268 kills.

“It seems like 12 years ago,” Weinheimer said. “That was kind of a whirlwind season. I hadn’t been a head coach in years, and I was just going to come in and be me.

“They had split with just about everybody in the league the year before. I didn’t understand how those girls had lost to some of those teams and they were like, ‘Ah, we didn’t really care about winning.’ That conversation kind of kicked us into, ‘We’re not losing to anybody.’ The drive came out with all of them.”

Newberry considered Ashland as a collegiate option before choosing Lewis. It’s a Catholic university that’s sponsored by the De La Salle Christian Brothers, an international Roman Catholic teaching order.

“I knew right away that Lewis was where I wanted to be,” said Newberry, who verbally committed in the spring of her junior year. “Once they offered, I committed basically right away.”

Smith recalled that Newberry emailed the Flyer coaching staff first and regularly sent highlight videos.

“She’s very thorough,” Smith said. “I watched her play two or three times and really liked her. She came here and practiced with us and made minor changes in the practice, and that to me is a big kicker. If you give a recruit one practice – that’s all you’re allowed – and they’re willing to try changes, you know they’re going to get better because they’ll make that effort.”

Newberry’s career path at Lewis has been unique. She was expecting to redshirt as a freshman, but ended up totaling 53 kills in 20 matches.

“We had a couple injuries and I got some playing time at the beginning of the year, then those people came back from injury and I didn’t play as much,” Newberry said. “But I was a freshman. I kind of knew that would be the case.”

The twist for her came the next year. When a couple players who had COVID years decided they wanted to use them and Lewis added a fifth-year transfer in the middle, Newberry decided just before the season began that she would take a redshirt year.

“I let anybody choose to redshirt that wants to,” Smith said. “I feel like as a coach if you tell them they have to, their heart’s not going to be in it. If you tell them they can’t, they’re going to resent you.”

Newberry conceded it wasn’t necessarily easy to step away for a season, but she immersed herself in the mind-set that she was going to take those practices and elevate herself as a player.

“It’s uncommon to redshirt your sophomore year, but it was a fun year anyway,” Newberry said. “We won conference that year, and I felt like I was able to contribute at practice and from the bench.

“I traveled for everything and practiced everything – you just don’t dress for games. I was practicing the same if not more than girls who were playing because I could be sore for the weekend because I wasn’t playing. I took full advantage of getting as many reps as I could. I was also able to lift harder and got stronger, so it was a good building year.”

Smith said it didn’t take long to realize Newberry was pushing her game to another level while taking a season off from the active roster.

“She went into practice to become a terminator and became the best middle in the gym,” Smith said. “She hands down went from being a good volleyball player to being an all-conference middle threat.”

Newberry returned to the lineup last year and was the only Flyer to start all 29 matches, collecting 238 kills, 120 total blocks, 96 digs and 14 aces.

She’ll have one more season at Lewis in 2027, but as it turns out, she could’ve played five years with the Flyers in the new NCAA landscape.

Newberry redshirted with the understanding that she’d be playing four seasons in five years, but the NCAA ruled this summer that student-athletes now have a five-year window of eligibility and redshirting is no longer a thing.

“There was no talk about the fifth year at that time, so she couldn’t have known,” Smith said. “The redshirt year was a good choice because of what she did with it.”

Newberry said it’s pointless to contemplate what might have been.

“There’s no reason to hold a grudge about that,” she said. “I feel like I really grew as a player and was able to stand out on my team that year, even though it wasn’t during games. I’m really trying to just live in the moment. This is my last year with a lot of the girls I came into college with because not all of them are planning on taking their fifth year, so I’m really trying to enjoy my time with them and not worry about the extra year that I didn’t get.”

This season has included a 3-0 sweep of third-ranked Concordia-St. Paul, a 5-0 start and trips to Buffalo, Denver and Daytona Beach. The Flyers finished 15-14 last year, a rare down season for a program that’s been an NCAA tournament staple.

“For 19 years, I never had a rebuilding year,” Smith said. “I had years that should’ve been and then just miraculously the team was good somehow. I was kind of hoping for that last year. But it really was a rebuilding year.”

Lewis is still really young now and loaded with freshmen and sophomores, but it’s a team that Smith believes in with talented youngsters and veterans like Newberry.

“It’s one of those years where you look down the bench and if our coach would tell anyone to sub in, no one’s worried,” Newberry said. “We have the depth. Everyone has the skill to do it. We’ll keep switching up the lineup because everyone is doing that well.”

Newberry didn’t think she had a great season in 2025.

“I feel like I didn’t have the offensive year that I wanted,” she said. “I still felt like I was an offensive threat on our team, but I was not the most efficient player. I feel like last year was just a mental battle and a self-confidence thing, but through the end of last fall and this spring, I’ve really been able to turn that around. I was trying to read into the numbers too much when I needed to just go out and play my game.”

Newberry believes she’s become a smarter hitter that doesn’t rely solely on power. Blocking remains the part of her repertoire that needs to be sharpened. She said it’s improved a lot since her Badin days, but there’s still a long way to go.

She described the keys to being a good middle hitter like this:

“I think you have to be quick in transition. After you’re done blocking, get off the net as fast as you can and be loud so the setters hear you. That’s what’s going to get them to set you. You can only set a middle if it’s a good pass, and anytime there’s that good pass, I’m yelling as loud as I can to push my setters to get me the ball. Luckily I’ve built that trust with them that they do get it to me.”

Newberry and fellow seniors Olivia Opstad and Kynzie Lilly are the Flyers’ captains, and Smith said Newberry won’t hesitate to confront a player and deal with an issue that needs to be dealt with.

“If she needs to clear the air, she’ll go up to the person and tell them directly,” Smith said. “You don’t get very many college-age kids that are like that.”

Newberry has four brothers and one sister with an age range from 12 to 21 among the siblings. Sarah was born in Augusta, Ga., and the family moved to Muncie, Ind., while her father Jay was doing collegiate basketball coaching at Augusta State and Ball State.

“Most of my younger childhood was in Muncie,” Newberry said. “When my dad was done with coaching, my parents talked and it was either Cincinnati where my dad’s from or Chicago where my mom’s from. Dad got a job in Cincinnati and we’ve been in Fairfield ever since. We moved when I was about 8 years old.”

Volleyball is pretty much a year-round thing for Newberry. Lewis has a spring season with practices and scrimmages, and Newberry coaches with the 1st Alliance Volleyball Club in the Chicago area and will be working with eighth-graders in the upcoming season.

She’s serious about the coaching piece. Newberry wants to try to play professional volleyball overseas after her final season as a Flyer player next fall, then she wants to start her collegiate coaching career as a graduate assistant.

Newberry has coaching in her blood between her parents. Her mother coached her in grade school.

“I love coaching,” Newberry said. “I feel like I know how to lead people. It definitely helped being an oldest sibling. As of now, my goal is to stick with coaching as long as I can.”

Newberry is working toward a bachelor’s degree in psychology and is minoring in sport management. She’s set to graduate in the spring and then begin master’s work in clinical mental health counseling in the fall. She wants to counsel kids.

The idea of playing overseas fascinates Newberry. Continuing her career and seeing the world are goals that go hand in hand.

“If she grinds it out, she’s hands down good enough to play overseas,” Smith said. “She’s got the personality. She’s fine being away from home. She’s good with social skills. What she needs to find out is if she likes that lifestyle.”

Newberry likes the atmosphere at Lewis. It’s an aviation school with an abundance of commuters, so the campus is a busy place during the day, but clears out after normal school hours.

“There’s about 7,000 people and about 6,000 of them are commuters,” Newberry said. “After like 3 p.m., it’s really just the athletes and the aviation majors that live on campus. I think it’s really fun because you get to know the sports teams a lot better and the aviation majors as well.”

Newberry will be on the road this weekend, traveling to Upper Iowa on Friday and Truman State in Missouri on Saturday. The Flyers’ regular season runs through Nov. 7, then it’s on to the GLVC tournament and beyond.

“My time here has been great,” Newberry said. “It’s a really fun, supportive environment where I’ve been surrounded by people who have been able to help me grow a lot.”

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