Air Force volleyball had a clear mission statement for 2025.

“We knew we didn’t want to repeat of last year,” sophomore Alysa Walker said.

The Falcons have already blown past that standard, and the season is only two weekends old.

At 6-0 – with wins over Navy and Wake Forest included in a pair of 3-0 tournament appearances – Air Force has doubled its win total from last year’s 3-26 campaign.

How this sudden, thorough turning of the page?

The answer, as usual, can be found in a thousand details.

It was senior Ashley Bible forgoing her three weeks of summer vacation to stick around and train at the academy.

It was the team keeping tabs of numbers in the weight room and on the floor during offseason workouts, giving players specific benchmarks to reach and fostering a competitive environment.

It was a new formation, placing sophomore Mia Loyd as the lone setter.

But most of all, it was a first-time coach making adjustments after drinking from the firehose that is adjusting to the helm of a program and doing so with the multitude of off-the-floor challenges unique to a service academy.

Her solution was simplification, realizing – or maybe accepting – that less can be more in some instances.

“Some of it was just realizing I don’t need to push the needle like I felt I needed to as a first-year head coach,” said Macey Donathan, a former All-American at Arizona State who took over the program in 2024-25 just as much of the roster also turned over because of graduation. “I just need to be the right person and bring the right attributes for them. Make them feel like what they’re doing is enough.

“They wouldn’t choose to be here and play volleyball if they didn’t want to be successful. They just hadn’t found it yet.”

That trust in letting the players’ intrinsic motivation paid quick dividends. Results in the spring scrimmages against other schools were encouraging, and a sense of ownership permeated through the roster.

“There’s just something different about the dynamics of our team this year,” said Bible, who leads the team with 91 kills and who will work in missiles as an officer following graduation. “I feel like we’re really cohesive, more so this year than last year. Everybody’s been putting in so much work from the end of last fall to now, including the coaches, and everything is starting to come together. It’s really exciting.”

Donathan points to some individual breakthroughs in powering the start, which also includes victories over Jacksonville State, Portland State, Seattle and George Mason.

Bible is averaging 3.96 kills per set, up from 2.27 a year ago and her hitting percentage has climbed from .116 to .194.

Loyd, the sophomore setter and mechanical engineering major, has thrived in the solo role, dishing out 262 assists.

Senior Jordan Suan became the fourth player in program history to account for 1,000 digs.

Perhaps the biggest step forward has come from Walker, the younger sister of recent four-year basketball starter A.J. Walker.

After suffering through a frustrating and injury-plagued freshman season, Walker averaged 12.7 kills in victories over Navy, Wake Forest and George Mason last weekend.

“I just think we’re bonded,” Walker said of the difference between the 2024 and 2025 seasons. “Practices are fun.”

Depth has helped, too. Donathan said an observer at practice would have no way of identifying which was the starting side.

It’s all added up to six wins. Already.

The Falcons travel to Southern Illinois on Thursday for a tournament that includes the host school as well as Austin Peay and Seattle.

“Ultimately all this has been done with underlying theme of, ‘We don’t want to do that again,’” said Donathan, who lived in the Colorado Springs area for one year when she was 12 and first found the sport when her father convinced her to try out for the Colorado Juniors volleyball club team in Monument. “We don’t want to be 3-26 again.”