This 'baller' from Serbia signed with Wisconsin. Why fulfilling her potential is on hold (2024)

The good news for the University of Wisconsin volleyball team is that it has landed a big time outside hitter to join the program for the 2024 season.

The not-so-good news is that she won’t be able to play until 2025.

But coach Kelly Sheffield is convinced that Una Vajagic will be worth the wait.

Vajagic, a dynamic six-rotation player from Serbia, has signed to become a Badger, culminating a rather whirlwind recruiting process.

But she will spend her first season at Wisconsin recovering from a torn ACL, an injury she suffered in February while playing in the Serbian Cup Final, a match in which she was the top scorer with 24 points and was named the MVP.

While the injury will keep her from helping the Badgers this season, helping bolster a relatively thin outside hitter group, it may actually have inspired her to look to coming to the United States for the next phase of her career.

“I’m not so sure without that knee injury that she would’ve made this jump,” Sheffield said. “But I think it allowed her to slow things down and assess her life and think that at some point my volleyball career is going to be done and what am I going to have to fall back on without an education?”

With that in mind she began reaching out to some schools in the U.S. to check into the possibility of combining volleyball and education.

Along the way Sheffield received a message from somebody in Serbia who had seen her play and that he might want to take a look at her. He watched “a ton of video” of her and decided to pursue Vajagic.

“We got a whiff of her later than some other schools had,” he said. “Things moved really quickly.”

After a couple of Zoom calls, Sheffield and Annemarie Hickey, director of scouting and player development, flew to Vajagic’s hometown of Novi Sad, the second largest city in Serbia about an hour from Belgrade. They had a get-acquainted dinner with Vajagic, her parents and older sister at a restaurant on the Danube River.

By that point Wisconsin had become one of the three finalists on her list, joining Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech.

A couple days later she headed to the States to visit those schools. Wisconsin was second on her itinerary but after spending a couple days around the team she decided she had found what she was looking for.

Sheffield is equally confident that he found what he was looking for in the 6-foot-1 Vajagic.

“She’s really good, certainly one of the best players in her age group over there,” Sheffield said. “And has played against really good competition. She’s been playing since she was really young and is an elite passer and defensive player.

“She’s not overly big, but has a good arm, can get the ball in a lot of different areas of the court and is a solid server. She can hit it out of the front row or the back row. She’s just a baller with a high IQ.”

The time spent around her and her family in Serbia and in Madison also made Sheffield comfortable that Vajagic would be a good fit with the Wisconsin program. He compared her personality to that of senior Julia Orzol, the Poland native who is one of four Europeans who will be on the roster this season, along with freshman Tosia Serafinowska, also from Poland, and junior Gulce Guctekin from Turkey.

“She’s probably a quieter Orzol,” Sheffield said. “There’s a genuine niceness about her. A kind kid. Pretty soft spoken off the court but has had to work for everything. You can tell there’s a blue collar work ethic to her. There is a love of the game.

“The entire family is into volleyball. Both of her parents coach volleyball and every night what they do as a family is they get around and watch Volleyball Nations League. She’s watching all these matches. I’m getting messages from her saying, 'I like how Brazil has been playing and China has been playing well, Serbia’s got to pick it up, the United States has been a little inconsistent.' She loves watching the game and learning and wants to be on that stage one of these days.”

Bringing in a foreign player wasn’t necessarily Plan A for Sheffield this offseason as he looked to add an outside hitter to pair with Big Ten and national player of the year Sarah Franklin and allow Orzol to remain at libero.

Experience, however, has taught Sheffield and his staff that such turns of events often work out for the best for all involved and that the key is to just keep moving forward.

“We’re always working and always have our eyes open,” Sheffield said. “And we don’t panic. There’s never panic about this. Maybe fans do. When you don’t hear anything you think nothing’s happening. Or there’s times that you think maybe somebody is coming here but it’s not a perfect fit.

“We don’t get worked up if somebody doesn’t come here because most of the time we can see it very clearly as we’re progressing through recruiting that it’s probably not going to be a good fit. At the end of the day, we’re looking for great talent that fits here. Sometimes we get into some conversations or people come in on visits and either way, it’s like, 'Uh, I don’t know if this is the direction we want to go.' Or they’re thinking the same thing.

“I think we’ve done a very good job of recruiting to our program and we’ve done it over a period of time and we know if we keep working it, we’ll end up with people that can help us.”

And while it would’ve been nice to have Vajagic available to help out this season, she figures to be especially valuable in 2025 to help fill the void left by the departures of Franklin and Orzol after this season. As things stand now, Vajagic will join incoming freshman Trinity Shadd-Ceres and 2025 recruit Madison Quest at outside hitter.

Sheffield is confident that Vajagic will be at full strength by then.

“She’s way ahead of schedule right now with her recovery,” he said. “She’ll be here in August and probably right around that time she should be starting to do some volleyball stuff. She’s too good of a player for us to not be interested, even with the injury. Especially with the turnover we have after this year. She’ll slide in perfectly.”