Izzy Starck Is Back — And She Chose Pitt Over Penn State

VolleyTea Staff
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If you’ve been sleeping on the Izzy Starck saga, wake up, because this is the transfer story of the 2026 season.

Let’s recap. Izzy Starck arrived at Penn State in 2024 as the No. 1 overall recruit in her class and immediately lived up to every bit of the hype. She broke the program’s single-season assists record as a freshman, 1,483, the most in Penn State history in the rally-scoring era, started every match, and helped the Nittany Lions win the national championship. She was named AVCA National Freshman of the Year. She was a Second Team All-American. She was, by every measure, the future of that program.

Then in September 2025, just four games into her sophomore season, she stepped away. In an Instagram post, she shared that she’d been facing challenges that had taken a serious toll on her mentally and emotionally, and that she needed to take a step back to get the help she needed. Penn State fully supported her and asked for her privacy to be respected. The volleyball community rallied around her.

And now she’s back — just not where anyone expected.

In December 2025, Starck entered the transfer portal. Shortly after, she was spotted on Pitt’s campus. By late December, it was official: Izzy Starck was a Panther.

Let that sink in. She didn’t just leave Penn State. She transferred to a program in the same state that Penn State fans have to see on the schedule every single year. That’s not a transfer, that’s a statement.

Penn State, meanwhile, had to go out and find a replacement, bringing in Florida setter Alexis Stucky as a graduate transfer, a perfectly fine player, but she is not Izzy Starck. Nobody is right now.

What makes this even bigger for 2026 is who Starck is walking into Pitt alongside. Olivia Babcock, one of the best outside hitters in the entire country, is back for her senior season. These two together? That’s a national title roster on paper. Pitt made the Final Four in 2025 and got swept by eventual champion Texas A&M largely because they needed more firepower. Problem potentially solved.

Starck still has three years of eligibility remaining. Three years. The Izzy Starck era at Pitt is just getting started, and Penn State fans are going to have to watch every second of it.