Consider it foreshadowing. In one of the most highlight-reel worthy plays of Concordia’s national semifinalist season of 2025, Shandy Fa’ali’i hit a ball so hard that it knocked the opposing libero backward and pinballed into the net for a kill. Earlier in the rally, Fa’ali’i strained herself for a sprawling dig. The totality of the sequence landed Bulldog Volleyball at No. 3 on SportsCenter’s top 10 on a mid-September day.
In an instant, the range of Fa’ali’i’s athletic talents were on display for a nationwide audience to see. More than a year later, Fa’ali’i is supplying high-flyin’ highlights on a match-by-match basis. The Lincoln East High School product became a major solution to the offseason question faced by coaches Ben and Angie Boldt: how do we replace 87.5 percent of the kills that departed from the 2025 roster?
As Ben Boldt said following the 2026 season’s first match, “She jumps out of the gym and creates a lot. She's a very dynamic player. When she attacks, it's like, ‘Oh man, how are you going to stop that?’”
What Fa’ali’i may lack in height (at 5-foot-8), she makes up for with an ability to jump out of the gym, as Boldt described. She’s also energetic to the max, ultra-competitive and her own harshest critic. The same player who registered just one kill all season as a freshman defensive specialist now ranks among the top 20 attackers nationally for average kills per set (3.80). The same player who once could hide behind the curtains as the spotlight shined on All-Americans like Ashley Keck has now taken center stage.
Fa’ali’i has assumed the six-rotation role formerly entrusted upon program all-time greats such as Keck and Camryn Opfer. Those comparisons are not quite fair, at least not yet for someone who spent her first two collegiate seasons playing exclusively in the back row. This isn’t entirely new to Fa’ali’i, who produced 885 kills during her prep career at Lincoln East. But there certainly has been an adjustment period.
Said Fa’ali’i of the most challenging aspect of her transition, “Definitely the mentality. It's just a mental game. Ben told me that would be the hardest thing about it, and I would say that's what it is. It's not just being hard on myself, but from every other aspect, too – you're going to compare yourself to other people, but you're in a different process. Being where your feet are is the biggest thing.”
The Boldts knew Fa’ali’i’s feet could rise high above the floor. When it comes to her positional switch, the wheels began turning back in December after the national tournament concluded. The personnel losses at the net were considerable: Keck and fellow All-American Ella Waters, in addition to the team’s Nos. 3 and 4 kills leaders, Kya Scott and Molli Martin.
In response, the Boldts placed Fa’ali’i at outside hitter in the spring and watched as she built confidence and regained the muscle memory that developed from playing the position in high school and in club volleyball. Fa’ali’i says she had grown to enjoy playing defensive specialist and believed her days as a front row player had ended. But she was willing to do what put the team in its best position to succeed.
Fa’ali’i recalls only a brief conversation about the switch. As she says, “I would have been very open to that. I would have done whatever Ben wanted. He was open to the idea, and that's when we started building it in the spring.
“Even if I wasn't playing, I would accept my role for this team because it's just amazing to be a part of. I love the girls so much, and they make it worth being here.”
This truly feels like home to Fa’ali’i, born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. She fields frequent questions about her background and ethnicity. Her father Falo hails from Western Samoa. Falo’s athletic pursuits led him into rugby and a stint playing for the Omaha GOATS Rugby Football Club. Shandy’s parents met in Hawaii before finding their way to Nebraska. Shandy takes pride in her roots and in her upbringing in Nebraska, where volleyball became a passion.
She started playing at eight years old, beginning a journey that included club membership with Nebraska One and Premier Nebraska Volleyball. At Lincoln East, she earned super state and Class A all-state recognition while putting herself on the radar of college volleyball programs. Originally, Fa’ali’i thought she may solely pursue the field of marine biology, rather than attempt to juggle the rigors of life as a student-athlete. However, the opportunity at Concordia felt too good to pass up.
“Angie and Ben were very supportive throughout the process,” Fa’ali’i said. “They constantly reached out, and it felt like home when I came here. As cliché as it sounds, they're like mom and dad. They treat us like we're their own kids, so it was easy to pick here over everywhere else. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play volleyball in college or not … But I knew this was the right place.”
She’s proven to be the type of player preferred by the Boldts. The ‘we-over-me’ mentality is obvious in the way that Fa’ali’i discusses her own success within a team context. There’s a culture, a chemistry and a system that has allowed the Bulldogs to continue to thrive even while undergoing a roster makeover. Fa’ali’i serves as a leader for one of the youngest teams the Boldts have presided over in their time at Concordia. Fa’ali’i is all the way bought in on the program’s tenets: love, trust, hard work and sacrifice.
Fa’ali’i didn’t necessarily clamor for the opportunity to be the team’s go-to attacker and a do-it-all contributor, but she’s embraced the role for how it allows everything else to fall into place. Emma Brueggemann and Jenna Sladky are the stalwarts at libero. The setters are new (freshman Myla Emery and sophomore Ella Brueggemann) and the front row has been fortified by the likes of Laynee Baker, Bella Hedke, Samantha Kimbell, Maddie Paulsen and Makenna Starkey.
There’s balance for sure, but more than 30 percent of the team’s attacking attempts have been directed to Fa’ali’i, who has responded with double-digit kill numbers in 13 of the season’s first 17 matches. Early validation came on Aug. 22 when she swatted 22 kills in a win over then seventh-ranked McPherson College. Fa’ali’i is honest in saying she’s still not sure she’s found a groove or reached the level that she expects from herself.
Offered Boldt of the strategic offseason switch, “It’s a position she’s played before in her career. She hit balls out of the back row for us last year. She hits the ball really hard. We had a lot of pins who graduated after last year, so it was a natural position of need. She fit pretty seamlessly into that. I think she was mentally ready for it. She’s a huge competitor and a huge leader on our team. I think it was very natural for her.”
She still must resist the urge to obliterate every volleyball set her way. Ben Boldt joked that he’d like to have a bingo card that Fa’ali’i must fill out each game with an array of tips, rolls and, of course, those signature booming kills that incite roars from the crowd.
As Fa’ali’i says, “I'm not very good at managing the ball. Everybody wants to get a kill. Everybody knows that. But your job as an outside is to manage the ball and keep the play going … I'm a very high-error person, so being more in control is definitely something I'm working on.”
The aggressiveness is a defining piece of Shandy and the 2026 team. The Boldts certainly don’t want to coach that part completely out of a squad that possesses an attacking mindset, whether it’s hitting, serving or passing. Shandy embodies those qualities.
Says Ben Boldt, “I think she always does things at a high level. She's a competitor. We talk about people who are gritty, and I think she's somebody who is going to compete, number one, but is also going to be able to play the game.”
Shandy will keep playing the game in 2026 and 2027 for a Concordia program that continues to push its boundaries while competing for championships. The junior biology major has a lot on her mind. She thinks about what comes next – marriage (she’s engaged to Bulldog Football student-athlete Jonny Puelz) and potential graduate school in a location to be determined.
Behind the scenes, Fa’ali’i worries about the same things many people her age do, but she knows she’s got a good thing going. Says Fa’ali’i, “I love being here. There's not a doubt in my mind that I wouldn't want to be here, and I'm happy I chose Concordia.”
The happiness comes out publicly and in emphatic fashion on many Wednesdays and Saturdays when Fa’ali’i observes her teammates making winning plays. Such plays are made possible, at least in part, by Fa’ali’i’s willingness and ability to perform her own integral role.
Beware: when Fa’ali’i’s on the court, there’s always that chance of the next SportsCenter highlight.