Marquette Volleyball Announces Additions of Emi & Tani Juric

On Monday, Marquette volleyball head coach Tom Mendoza announced two new additions to his 2026 roster. Emi and Tani Juric will be joining the Golden Eagles for the coming fall season. As far as I can tell — this information is not in the official team press release — the pair of sisters from Slovenia are 18 years old and joining the roster as freshmen with four years of eligibility. I feel pretty solid about the 18 year old thing, but since the press release doesn’t explicitly say they have all four years of eligibility, I guess we’ll have to wait to see what happens when Marquette officially adds them to the roster page.

Well, let’s go to the press release on details here, as I’m absolutely not going to get as far as Marquette can in terms of tracking down information about Slovenian players. First, head coach Tom Mendoza:

“We have really enjoyed getting to know both Tani and Emi, and they will be great additions to Marquette Volleyball on and off the court. Although they are very different as players, Emi as a libero and Tani as a right side, they each bring a great combination of experience and upside as they continue to grow as people and players,” Mendoza said. “The group we’ve had this spring has been training really hard and taking large steps to achieve our goals next fall and beyond. Bringing Emi and Tani into the group will help us towards those goals, and we are very excited about the direction we’re heading.” 

And then Emi Juric:

Emi joins Marquette after representing Slovenia at the U16, U18, U20 and senior national team levels, most recently competing at the World Championships. The libero has earned several major international and national honors, including MVP at the Cornacchia World Cup in Italy and MVP of the Slovenian U20 National Championship. Emi was also named Best Libero at the International Tournament Karlovac and has accumulated multiple additional awards throughout her development. In 2024, she was recognized as the best receiver during the European Championship Qualification at the U18 level. She has competed for OK Ankaran Hrvatini from 2022 through 2026. 

And Tani Juric:

Tani enters the program as one of Slovenia’s most dominant young opposite attackers, standing 6-foot-5 and bringing elite-level experience at the U17, U18, U20 and senior national team levels. She recently helped the Slovenian senior national team qualify for the European Championship. Tani’s decorated résumé includes MVP honors at the Slovenian U16 National Championship, two Best Opposite awards at the Slovenian U18 National Championship and a Best Attacker award at the MEVZA U18 competition. She was also named Best Opposite at the 2024 MEVZA Qualification for the U18 age group. Tani has played for OK Ankaran Hrvatini from 2023 through 2026. 

Since the pair share a birthday on Volley Box, I’m going to presume that they’re twin sisters, but because they have different listed heights — you’ll note that Marquette mentioned that Tani is 6’5” but didn’t say anything about Emi — I’m also going to feel pretty safe about guessing that they’re fraternal twin sisters.

If I had to guess, I’d imagine that both women have a solid chance of breaking into a Marquette rotation that is likely to be freshman heavy in 2026. The Golden Eagles return no starters from 2025 who will be juniors or seniors in 2026, and only return seven players altogether from the 2025 roster. Tani Juric will be the tallest player on the roster, beating out Keira Schmidt by two inches, and you’d have to think that gives her an edge when it comes time to handing out playing time as a hitter. Emi Juric has a relatively open runway to playing time at libero for Marquette, although Avery Helms appeared in 101 of Marquette’s 108 sets this past season as a defensive specialist. Until Juric actually gets on the court in Milwaukee, even the coaching staff won’t know for sure if she can clearly beat out Helms for the libero job, but if you can be one of the two liberos on the national team roster at the 2025 World Championships, I think you’ve got a solid chance of being a good libero right away in Division 1.

And so, let’s drop in a roster chart.

Yes, that includes three freshmen for the 2027 roster that have announced commitments but won’t be able to sign with Marquette until this fall. There also hasn’t been a writeup on any of them on this site because information on high school volleyball is kind of light around the internet. In any case, seeing Ryanne Brubaker, London Evans, and Lola Robertson on the roster is informative here because while Tom Mendoza has four open roster spots for 2026, he’ll only have two more spots open for 2027. We’re way past the window where you’d expect to hear about transfers coming into the program, so unless Mendoza and his staff have a line on another freshman, this is probably the roster they’re expecting heading into August and preseason training.

It’s probably not ideal for Mendoza to have back-to-back seasons where he’s going to be heavily reliant on freshmen emerging immediately as contributors. Given the nature of how he took over the program well into last year’s spring semester with women already enrolled and on campus for their freshman seasons, there’s only so much he was going to be in control of as things moved from 2025 to 2026. As long as the roster situation stabilizes from here in terms of players coming in and going out, it’ll probably fine in the long term. After all, Mendoza coached a team he essentially had nothing to do with building to the NCAA tournament last year. Next year’s team will be very much his roster construction, and in theory, that’s beneficial to his long term view of what Marquette volleyball should be on the court.

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