PUERTO RICO – Gabby Waden closed out her college volleyball career at Mississippi State having accomplished just about everything that she wanted to do.
The former Blythewood High School standout went to an up-and-coming Southeastern Conference program and helped make it better. After graduating in spring 2022, she spent her fifth year of eligibility in 2023 working on and finishing her master’s degree in sports administration.
To start 2024, Waden will be going pro. She flew to Puerto Rico Tuesday, where she will join Criollas de Caguas in Puerto Rico as a Middle Blocker.
“It’s exciting to say the least,” Waden said hours before her flight. “The closer and closer I got to the signing date and realized that I’m going to continue playing volleyball, it’s been a mixture of anxious energy and excitement.”
Criollas de Caguas is a perennial power in the Liga de Voleibol Superior Feminino. The team won 14 league titles since 1996, with the most recent being in 2021.
Waden’s flight to Caguas Tuesday marks the end of her post-graduate drive to find a professional place on a volleyball court, and the beginning of her next chapter. Once she finished her master’s work, she decided to make an all-out effort to go pro.
“I wanted to finish my master’s first and figure out what I wanted to do first,” Waden said. “After that break I found myself missing it (volleyball) and made the choice to play. I thought that I may not get that opportunity later, so I decided to take a leap of faith and see what’s out there for me.”
With her NCAA eligibility exhausted, turning pro was as simple as declaring that she was now a paid athlete. From that point, she said, agents and interested parties come to the pro.
“Agents kind of find you depending on your caliber of talent,” she said. “They will say that ‘there’s a really good market for you in this place’ and ‘we think that you will have a high success rate in one of these areas.’ You go through the pros and cons of each agent, and go through the coaches you meet, because they know the rules a lot more than you do.”
With Criollas de Caguas, she found a team and coaching staff that she felt would be a great fit for her—and the team felt the same way about her.
“They’re a very competitive program in Puerto Rico. They contend for championship every year,” Waden said. “They were looking for someone with a competitive drive who could contribute to them winning another championship.”
The idea of signing with a top team so polished in the routine of playing for and winning championships is relatively new to Waden, who while playing for Mississippi State for five years contributed greatly to making the program competitive at the SEC level.
That alone—setting a program on the road to success—is an accomplishment that Waden contributed greatly. In her final year with the Bulldogs she had 408 kills, 452 points and 70 blocks as Mississippi State went 15-13. She earned American Volleyball Coaches Association’s South All-Region honors, as well as the LUV Invitational All-Tournament Team and Tournament MVP honors, and made the SEC fall academic honor roll.
“The season went great at first,” she said. “We started off ranked and did really well, but we didn’t make the postseason like we had planned. Nevertheless, we established ourselves as a competitor in the SEC, and I’m leaving the program in a better position than it was when I came to it.”
Over her college career, she had 1,515 kills and 1,674 points.
She said she will meet with the coaches and the team and go over technical and tactical plans for her and the team, what the team should expect from her. Among the players she’ll meet formally is University of Missouri alum Andrea Fuentes.
“I don’t know her personally, but I know her through playing the University of Missouri a couple of times. She’s really an amazing athlete, and I’ve been told by the coaches that we could really complement each other well.”
After having gone through the process of ferreting out agents, signing away the rights to highlight videos and other accolades on promotional websites, and sorting through interest and offers from teams, Waden said she’s nothing but excited about moving on in her volleyball career.
“At first I was pretty skeptical about not only signing your rights away, but going to a new environment. It’s been nerve-racking to say the least,” she said. “Once I did and got that over with, I’m thinking how crazy it is that I’m a professional athlete.”
A four-year letterman at Blythewood High School, Waden was tallied over 1,000 kills and blocks during her career as a Bengal, named Region Player of the Year for three seasons, was a finalist for SC Gatorade Player of the Year her junior year, and was named All-Midlands Player of the Year as a junior. She graduated from Blythewood High School in 2018.
