By the end of her freshman season, sophomore setter Caelyn Dumas racked up a team-high 587 assists, good for seventh in the Metro conference.
20 games into her second season, Dumas has racked up 793 assists, good for second in the country.
A lot changed for Dumas in just one offseason: Marist brought in a new head coach in Annie DeLoid, graduate student setter Claire Lewis graduated and the Red Foxes made major changes in how they play volleyball — switching to a 5-1 offense, meaning Dumas doesn’t rotate out and gets more reps at setter.
Dumas was more than ready, ascending not only in her role as a setter, but as a captain of the team.
“Early in our first practice is when I noticed Caelyn, immediately,” said DeLoid. “The biggest thing I noticed was her command… she’s earned the respect of her teammates.”
While it was jarring for DeLoid to witness her then-freshman setter orchestrating the offense, it’s been even more shocking for their opponents this season.
“She was only a freshman when I met her, which is wild, because anybody that I’ve ever talked to has said, ‘What year is your setter?’ and expected me to say senior or grad,” said DeLoid.
Dumas is no stranger to captaining a volleyball team. According to her, she’s been the captain of every team she’s played on since she was 12 years old.
To DeLoid, having a sophomore captain as talented as Dumas is an exorbitant privilege. With two or three more full seasons left in Dumas’ collegiate career, she hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface on her abilities.
“The possibilities are endless. She could leave Marist as one of the best captains this school has ever seen,” said DeLoid. “I can’t even imagine her in the next three, four years. [She’s] just going to be a very scary person to play against.”
Dumas grew up in Katy, Texas, around 30 miles west of Houston. One glance at her family tree could tell you that her path to Division I athletics was predestined.
Both of her parents were athletes at Grambling State; her mother, Shalonda, played volleyball, while her father, Channing, played basketball. Her brother, CJ, was a quarterback for Prairie View A&M and her cousin, LJ Cryer, played basketball at Baylor, transferred to Houston and is now a member of the Golden State Warriors.
Sprinkle in aunts, uncles and more cousins, and Dumas estimates that over 75% of her extended family has at least played at the Division I level — but that’s not to say she didn’t work for it.
As a kid, Dumas preferred basketball, but after finally conceding to her mother’s suggestions to give volleyball a shot, she didn’t look back.
“The first game I had, I just fell in love with it. I started playing club at eight years old, and since then my entire life has literally been volleyball,” said Dumas.
Similar to AAU basketball, the private club world of volleyball rapidly becomes more important than its public school counterpart.
“Club is definitely more important,” said Dumas. “You can get recruited from school, but it’s really not that popular, especially since club volleyball is such a big world now.”
Club volleyball’s significance comes with commitment. Shalonda Dumas got ahead of it early, sitting her daughter down as a freshman in high school and really asking her if she wanted to go all-in on volleyball.
Caelyn’s answer was simple: “I’m going to put in the extra work.”
The club volleyball season is a couple of weeks shy of being year-round, but playing for school results in an overlap of the two seasons and a true calendar year of just volleyball.
The physical dedication is joined in tandem by financial dedication to truly torment the families involved.
“It’s expensive, it’s year-round. If you want to be good, you go to extra camps, you go to college camps, clinics, private lessons, work out outside of volleyball,” said Dumas.
Thankfully, Dumas’ sports-focused family was more than happy to accommodate her growing schedule of commitments, especially since Dumas’ club team was good. Club volleyball nationals took place in the summer and wrapped up just around when school started back up.
Naturally, more months of volleyball meant more travel, more work and more money. And Dumas never missed nationals.
Once the thought of playing collegiate volleyball becomes more possible, the already-wild work of club volleyball gets worse.
For an aspiring Division I volleyball player, the brunt of the recruitment responsibility comes from themselves. They tell coaches who they are, their stats, show them their film, tell them where they’ll be playing. Then they repeat this process for every college on their very large list.
“I can’t even remember all the schools I talked to. I sent over 100 emails every week,” said Dumas. “As a volleyball player, you want to make sure everyone knows what you’re doing at this exact time. You need to be able to put your name out there.”
Dumas’ process of committing to Marist required her to cast a giant net, and more importantly, a precise filter.
“I wanted to prioritize going to a school that valued me as a setter. I didn’t want to go anywhere where I couldn’t ever see myself touching the court,” said Dumas.
Due to these standards, a lot of large schools in prominent conferences were quickly phased out, as Dumas felt unsure if she would touch the court in her first year or get phased out at the end of it.
Naturally, as a Texas native, when Dumas first heard the name “Marist,” she had no clue what it was. As she learned more about it and got deeper in the recruitment process, a lot of possible options were contained in the Northeast cluster of the United States.
Dumas found herself deciding between Marist, Metro rival Rider and fellow Hudson Valley institution Army West Point. After Dumas came on an official visit to Poughkeepsie, the race was over. Marist head coach Sean Byron slipped her a piece of paper while at dinner; she opened it to reveal a full scholarship.
Her commitment came on the early side at the end of her junior year of high school. She joined fellow star sophomore outside hitter Mallory Reck as the first early commitments in her class.
Both being members of powerful club teams, Reck and Dumas ran into each other at tournaments and frequently texted off the court. Now teammates, their synergy shows in every match.
“Mallory and I are very close off the court, and we’ve definitely worked on building that relationship,” said Dumas. “We’re both just very hungry athletes. It makes it very easy for us to play with each other. I don’t see our connection breaking, ever.”
Dumas’ collegiate career didn’t get off to a terribly easy start. In the pre-season, Lewis was hurt, leaving the freshman as the only playable setter on the roster.
“That was definitely a lot for me, coming in as a freshman,” said Dumas. “I didn’t have anyone else in my position that helped me out or encouraged me. Obviously my team still had my back, but there’s a difference.”
After the 2025-26 season wrapped up, Lewis graduated, leaving Dumas as the lone setter for several spring tournaments under DeLoid.
“It was difficult. Especially since this year, we have three setters; we have sort of a setter family, and we really lean on each other for feedback and encouragement. In the spring, I didn’t have that,” said Dumas.
Nine games into the 2026-27 campaign, Marist volleyball sits second in the Metro with a 4-3 record, due in large part to Dumas’ prowess as an engine for its offensive attack. With 9 games left before playoffs, the young setter looks to etch her name into the Metro, and beyond, into Marist volleyball history.
Edited by Ryan Eichem and Max Rosen
Graphic by Jaylen Rizzo
Photos from Marist Athletics and Emil Portnov
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