Anatomy of a Transfer

When you look at the UO volleyball team’s stat sheet in 2021, one name jumps out.

Gloria Mutiri.

Second on the team in points. Second on the team in kills. Second on the team in kills per set. Second on the team in points per set.

And to think she didn’t meet most of her teammates until June, when she arrived on campus to prepare for a 2020 season that was eventually delayed by five months due to a pandemic.

“I’m starting to get the hang of it a little better,” said Mutiri, who led the Ducks in kills and hitting percentage in the 3-0 win over No. 19 UCLA on January 31 and scored the match-winning kill—her 15th kill of the match—in the 3-2 win over No. 7 Washington on March 7.

If Mutiri feels she hasn’t yet come close to reaching her potential, the rest of the Pac-12 should consider themselves put on notice.

Prior to Oregon’s season opener in January, the last time Mutiri played in a competitive match she was wearing the purple and gray of Kansas State. A Second Team Under Armor All-America selection coming out of high school in Oklahoma, Mutiri made an instant impact on the Wildcats and was named All-America Honorable Mention and Midwest Freshman of the Year by the American Volleyball Coaches Association. She played in every set as a freshman and sophomore and ranked in the top three for the team in every offensive category.

But off the court, all was not well.

In 2013, her father, Pepe Mutiri, a Congolese immigrant who established a ministry in Tulsa, Oklahoma, died of cancer at the age of 54. Just one year later, her mother, Chantal Mutiri, who helped feed and rehabilitate orphans in Kenya before moving to Oklahoma with Pepe, died of a vascular disorder, aged 46.

That left Gloria—then just a freshman in high school—and her sisters Faith (now 24), Grace (now 22), and Victoria (now 19), without their parents while they navigated their teenage years in Oklahoma.

The Mutiri sisters. Photo courtesy Mutiri Sisters Facebook page.

The siblings moved into a group home, and Mutiri began to map out her future. A fan of Maria Taylor, the former University of Georgia volleyball player turned ESPN broadcaster, Mutiri wanted to follow a similar path and play for a competitive college program, then play professionally, and then get into broadcasting. Only, life in the group home was chaotic and she found the entire recruiting process stressful, which just added anguish onto what should be an exciting time for any high school student.

Mutiri initially committed to play volleyball for Ohio State, but then decommitted and signed with Kansas State to remain closer to her sisters. But as her years in Manhattan, Kansas, wore on, she realized she, and the Mutiri sisters, just needed a fresh start.

“We just decided that we wanted to relocate and start somewhere new,” she said. “That was a really tough decision for me because I really loved K-State, and the university was really good to me and the people were really amazing. But I think there comes a point where your mental health has to take a bigger role in your life.

“That was when I opened up my recruiting process. I really had to think about somewhere that was beneficial for what my sisters and I were planning to do, but also where I could still have what I wanted to do in school.”

So, she put her name into the transfer portal.

The transfer portal, created in 2018, was designed to bring order to the transfer process. When a student-athlete decides they want to transfer to another school, they alert their school’s compliance officer, who confirms with them that they are aware of what they will be giving up at the end of that term or semester—scholarship, access to the training rooms and weight rooms, and so on (the University of Oregon lets transferring students continue to use academic resources until they transfer, however). If the student-athlete reiterates that they still want to leave, the compliance officer officially enters their name into the portal.

From there, university coaches and administrators can check a website and see the names of players who are available, and search by sport, school, and conference. Hypothetically, if UO head volleyball coach Matt Ulmer was looking for an outside hitter with two years of eligibility left to replace departing senior Willow Johnson, BS ’20 (art)—who now plays professionally in the new Athletes Unlimited volleyball league—he could’ve accessed the transfer portal, seen Gloria Mutiri’s name in there, and reached out to her to recruit her to come to Oregon.

“I remember leaving the compliance office, and [the Kansas State compliance officer] was like, ‘Okay, your name’s in there.’ By the time I got home, I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s so many emails,’” said Mutiri, who estimated she was contacted by 40 different schools on the day she was added to the transfer portal. “I was getting so many texts, and people were calling me. It was a little bit overwhelming, but it was kind of cool just to see, like, ‘Okay, I have options.’ I think transferring can be so, so scary because you're leaving everything that you know, and you’re taking a dive off the deep end hoping that you catch something, so it was really reassuring to know I was going to have options.”

But the portal also allows student-athletes to initiate contact with coaches, and Mutiri, who had a clearer idea of what she wanted than she did while in high school, did just that.

Gloria Mutiri (16) subs in for setter Kylie Robinson (21) during a match against UCLA while Taylor Borup (17) looks on. 

“One of my old teammates was friends with some of the girls here,” said Mutiri. “She was like, ‘I think you'd be a perfect fit at the University of Oregon.’ I was like, ‘Oregon? What’s in Oregon? That’s so far away. I don't even know what people do up there.’ She started that interest for me in the UO. As soon as I got into the portal I actually contacted Matt first and was like, ‘Hey, I know some people that know your team and they have nothing but great things to say, and I’m kind of interested in seeing what the UO is about.’”

Mutiri flew to Eugene for an official visit during finals week in December 2019, when there was little taking place and while the coaches were preparing to pack up and leave campus. The campus caught her eye—“the facilities are amazing and definitely lived up to the hype,” she said—but what really got her attention was the amount of support the women’s basketball team got.

“I was able to go to a women’s basketball game, and just seeing how many fans were attending a women’s basketball game blew me away,” she said. “How much support there is from the community for women’s sports was something that I’d really never seen, so I was really excited about that.”

Her interest officially piqued, there were two final steps: making sure Ulmer was running the type of program she was looking to join, and making sure Eugene and the University of Oregon would be good fits for her sisters, all of whom would be making the move with her.

“I met with the coaches, and I had a very deep and honest conversation with Matt about what I expected from the coaching staff and what I wanted from a new team,” said Mutiri. “I really wanted to play with a competitive team, and I know this is division one level so everyone’s competitive, but I think there's another level of cognitive awareness, coming to practice and really competing to be the best and taking pride in yourself as an athlete and as a team.

“Matt was describing the program to me and just how much pride Oregon athletes take in themselves, and he was saying, ‘When you come here, you’re not going to see anyone who is not committed or not invested, because everyone here are top-tier athletes and they’re very competitive.’ That really lit me up because I was so excited for that opportunity, and just in a coach I need complete honesty and transparency, like, ‘Tell me if things are not looking good. Tell me what I need to do to fix it.’ Sometimes coaches can conflate mind games, it can be up and down, even in their commitment, and so I was very honest with him. I was like, ‘That’s not anything that I need in my life,’ and he was like, ‘Well here we’re very, very competitive and we’re going to do whatever it takes to win and I’m always going to be honest with you.”

“Gloria had seen Ronika Stone (BA '20 (journalism)), and Ronika’s relationship with Maria Taylor, and that’s what Gloria wants to do: be a broadcast journalist or sideline reporter,” said Ulmer. “She wants to be in front of the camera. She’s so well spoken, and so smart. She’s going to be great at that. Her idol is Maria Taylor, and she saw here’s a path to do this for a career. But she also wants to play pro, and we’ve had a lot of success with that, especially with our opposites. Our last three or four have played professionally, so the combination of those two things made Oregon a really nice destination for her.”

“I felt so comfortable and at home, even though there was really a lot that I didn't know,” Mutiri said. “That feeling was something that I needed to feel in order to feel like, ‘Okay, this is where I can be.’ I didn't feel like I would feel comfortable at any other school.”

One hurdle down.

“When I was thinking of a school, I would send it to my sisters and say, ‘Okay, can you see yourselves here? What are the opportunities for what you want to do?” said Mutiri. “We all came together and would say, ‘Okay, this is a good option and this isn’t.’ My little sister was in love with the UO campus and like she was like, ‘I want to go here. I know so many people that love it here and have had a great freshman experience.’ She got accepted, and then when my older sister got accepted for her master’s I was like, ‘Okay, I really need to really look into the school because it seems like it’s checking off all the boxes.”

Second hurdle down.

Mutiri signed with the University of Oregon and arrived in Eugene in March to begin her spring term. One week later she was back in Oklahoma, because the university closed for in-person instruction due to COVID-19.

Gloria Mutiri celebrates with her teammates during the Ducks' win over No. 7 Washington on March 7.

Mutiri then returned to Eugene in June with Victoria, who was accepted into the UO and is now in her first year. Grace has been accepted into graduate school to pursue a master’s degree and will be moving to Eugene later in 2021, along with Faith. When Gloria and Victoria arrived in Eugene, the fall volleyball season was, at that point, only penciled in—and was eventually postponed to winter 2021. Gloria had been a Duck for several months but was yet to meet many of her own teammates in person.

“I really hadn’t met the team,” said Mutiri. “I didn’t have any team chemistry; I didn’t really know anybody. We were doing a lot of things over Zoom. Trying to learn a new offense and just get integrated into the program over Zoom was a little difficult. So when I got here in June, any contact with the team or the coaches was very helpful.”

Mutiri’s fall was spent taking journalism classes online while also adjusting to a new team and a coaching style she’d never experienced before.

“Matt really encourages his players to make decisions for themselves,” said Mutiri. “I think I’ve always been a ‘yes’ player, like coach tells me, ‘Do this,’ and I do it. And Matt teaches volleyball like, ‘What do you think you should do in this situation? How should you respond?’ and that was a very new perspective, and it took me a while to get it.”

“There’s some things we had to tinker around with and change, but for the most part she’s an amazing athlete,” said Ulmer. “She’s so smart and so quick, and her volleyball IQ is really growing. I feel like it’s been a pretty seamless transition with her.”

The UO volleyball team is the second youngest in the Pac-12—of the 14 players on the roster, 11 are freshmen or sophomores. Prior to this campaign getting underway, the conference’s coaches picked the Ducks—who, just two seasons ago, advanced to the Elite Eight—to finish seventh overall, and only junior Brooke Nuneviller made the 14-person Preseason All-Conference Team.

Midway through the season, the Ducks are 9-3, ranked No. 19 overall, have wins over No. 19 UCLA and No. 7 UW, and are second overall in the Pac-12. And while Mutiri says she’s just starting to get the hang of Oregon’s system, she currently ranks among the conference’s top-15 in kills and top-20 in hitting percentage.

UO fans can’t pack Matthew Knight Arena to cheer for Mutiri and the Ducks like they normally would, but with many matches televised or streamed online, they can support the side from afar. But having already seen what the support for women’s basketball is like, Mutiri cannot wait to play in front of the Pit Crew and show off her blend of athleticism and power to a raucous home crowd.

“I'm excited for what that's going to look like when COVID is all over and we’re able to have fans in the venue again.”

 - story by Damian Foley, UO Communications. Photos courtesy UO Athletics.