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It’s not just college football season that’s about to start. The 2026 college volleyball campaign has already begun with a bang, with Pitt and SMU already picking up top 15 wins. Most of the rest of the country will kick into gear on Friday.
You don’t need me to tell you that interest in volleyball has exploded over the past few years, but I’ll do it anyway. High school volleyball is the biggest sport (by participation) in almost every state in the country. TV ratings for the regular season broke records again, and even more games this year will be available on linear television.
And now fans will get to enjoy a new podcast built to cover that growing game from every national angle.
Six Zone Duo, hosted by award-winning journalists Amie Just and Erin Sorensen, launches today, with new episodes dropping every Monday. Just and Sorensen will interview coaches, athletes and national experts, as well as break down major games all season. After the NCAA championships, the show will also provide coverage of professional volleyball.
If that name sounds familiar, well ... there's a reason. Alex Kirshner and Richard Johnson, founders of the popular college football podcast Split Zone Duo, will execute and produce Six Zone Duo. Like SZD, Six Zone Duo will also be presented by vintage college athletics apparel brand Homefield. (Disclosure: Alex and Richard are former coworkers of mine and close personal friends.)
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Anybody with a connection to Nebraska should recognize Just and Sorensen. Just is an award-winning columnist for the Lincoln Journal Star, where she’s extensively covered (among other things) Nebraska women’s volleyball. Sorensen, the co-founder of Counter Read, has covered Nebraska athletics for over a decade. Both Just and Sorensen also teach at the University of Nebraska.
You might be wondering: Can two “Nebraska people” effectively run a national show? Why on earth would they try to launch something so ambitious right now, when they both have other jobs and are teaching college students?
Well, Just pointed out that “she isn’t just a Nebraska person.” Even though she works for the Lincoln newspaper, Just graduated from Kansas and previously lived in Louisiana and Montana while covering college sports for other outlets. “I’m at the Final Four, even if Nebraska isn’t playing.”
Sorensen admits to being a Nebraska person (she attended John Cook volleyball camps as a kid, after all), but she told me the passion of the Cornhusker fanbase and everything that comes with it only animated her love for the sport as a whole. “What I’ve been able to see and cover in Nebraska is what I want for every college volleyball fan,” she said.
Beyond traveling to other games and markets, the two also stressed to me that they want Six Zone Duo to be accessible to everybody, college volleyball sickos and otherwise.
“We want to meet people where they are,” Just told me. “You won’t need to be a sicko to enjoy the show.” Sorensen added that while the show might be able to convince more folks to become volleyball sickos, the point of the podcast is to enrich the fan experience for everybody, whether or not they’re schematic nerds. “We want to make the entire college volleyball community proud,” she said.
You can reach Six Zone Duo’s team at [email protected], and you can download the show wherever you get your podcasts.
In non-Friend of the Newsletter Podcast News, today I also want to highlight an important story that includes one of the rarest bits of information in all of college sports: actual, honest-to-goodness, verified college athlete payment data.
Here’s what (many) California public schools spent on House payments
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