Wherever Saige Ka'aha'aina-Torres goes, success follows. Next stop: Grand Rapids.
Story by Alex Eisen / Photo by Nicolas Carrillo
Snow-covered trees and icy roads greeted Saige Ka'aha'aina-Torres when she arrived in West Michigan. The first winter storm of the season rolled in just days before the Grand Rapids Rise opened training camp for the 2026 season, a fitting welcome for someone who had been bracing herself for Midwest weather long before boarding the plane.
Ka'aha'aina-Torres grew up in sunshine-soaked Hawaii and most recently lived in Texas. She endured snow during her early college years at the University of Utah, but surviving an unfamiliar Michigan winter still felt like another level. Before moving, she leaned on fellow Honolulu native and former high school teammate Elena Oglivie, who had played for the Rise last season and was happy to welcome her back as a teammate in Grand Rapids.
True to form, her calm and steady libero offered reassurance.
“It took a lot of convincing,” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “She was like, ‘Saige, I promise it is OK.’ I was like, ‘No, I have been doing my research.’ I would read the weather reports and I was like, ‘Elena, I can’t do it.’ And she was like, ‘You’ll be fine.’”
She laughs about it now. That perfectly timed snowstorm served as her first real introduction to Grand Rapids. Another new city, another fresh start, and another opportunity to succeed somewhere she has never been before.
The journey to Grand Rapids has been a series of bold leaps into the unknown. Ka'aha'aina-Torres didn’t start playing volleyball until she was 11 years old, a later start than many of her peers, but her natural athleticism and competitive drive quickly propelled her forward.
That competitiveness didn’t come out of nowhere. Growing up with her younger brothers, Houston and Elijah, in an athletic family, Ka'aha'aina-Torres learned how to fend for herself. Their father, Malo, played football at Arizona State, and Houston is currently an offensive lineman at the University of Nebraska.
Volleyball was never really part of Saige’s plan. Her mom, Jennifer, was the one who eventually signed her up, mostly because every other sport she tried just wasn’t sticking.
“Honestly, I don’t think my parents really wanted me to play sports,” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “They encouraged it, but they were never like, ‘You have to do this.’ My mom thought I should play basketball, and my dad thought I should do track. I was like, ‘Well, I don’t want to do either of those.’ I think they just wanted me to find something that made me happy. Once I found volleyball and they could see how many doors it opened for me, they were super supportive. They were always like, ‘Yeah, we wish you were an artist or something, but volleyball is cool, too.’ I can’t even draw.”
By the time she reached high school, Ka'aha'aina-Torres was painting her own path. She played as an outside hitter and, alongside Oglivie, who was also an outside hitter at the time, helped lead ʻIolani School to a state championship in 2016. But it was playing for the Kuʻikahi Volleyball Club where she started to learn how to set, a skill that would eventually define her playing career.
“By my junior and senior year, I realized I needed to learn how to set for real because I didn’t think I was going to play outside hitter in college,” she said. “It was my own assumption, but I enjoyed setting during the club season, and I wanted to challenge myself. As a setter, you’re always involved with everybody on the court, and you need a strong relationship with the coach. That’s always been important to me, so the role just made more sense to me as I got older.”
With her parents’ advice and support, Ka'aha'aina-Torres verbally committed to the University of Missouri when she was only a high school freshman. It was a decision that made sense at the time.
“I didn’t really know how recruiting worked, and I wasn’t sure if I would get any more offers,” she said. “My parents were super-encouraging. They said, ‘Just take it. You don’t know what could happen, so take what you have.’ I was fine with that at the time and committed. But as I got older, I realized, no, I wasn’t moving to Missouri.”
The Show-Me State was too far away and too unfamiliar. Instead, her college career began at the University of Utah, where she left an undeniable mark on the program. Ka'aha'aina-Torres set the school’s single-season assists record with 1,518 in 2019 and earned an AVCA All-America Honorable Mention. The Utes reached the NCAA Tournament in all three of her seasons, two of them alongside current Rise teammate Berkeley Oblad, but never advanced past the Sweet 16.
When the opportunity to transfer to the University of Texas arose, Ka'aha'aina-Torres jumped at it. The Longhorns offered a chance to compete for a national championship, and she was ready to seize it. No questions asked.
“[Texas head coach] Jarrett Elliott called me and I was like, ‘I want to win a national championship,’” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “It was a super-easy decision.”
After serving her time as the backup setter during Texas’ 2021 run that fell one win short of reaching the Final Four, Ka'aha'aina-Torres achieved her objective the following season.
No. 1-ranked Texas (28-1 overall) swept No. 4 Louisville, led by former Rise standout Claire Chaussee, to capture the program’s fourth national championship at CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska. Ka'aha'aina-Torres finished with 37 assists in the 2022 title match, capping her five-year collegiate career with 3,783 assists.
“Texas really taught me a lot about team chemistry and a lot about trust,” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “You can go much further when you have trust, a common goal, and just a general understanding that nothing is ever personal. We're all here to accomplish the same thing. As long as you're working toward that every single day, we're all on the same page.”
After enjoying the top-tier facilities and high-end amenities at Texas, Ka'aha'aina-Torres took her first steps into the professional game in Puerto Rico with the Changas de Naranjito. There, she quickly learned that having talent alone wasn’t enough. She had to master recovery, nutrition, and the daily grind of being a professional athlete.
Her career then continued overseas in France, where she played for Vandœuvre Nancy VB during the 2023-24 season, facing familiar rivals and future teammates in yet another new environment.
“I vividly remember playing against Carli [Snyder],” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “She has always been a really good player ever since she was at Florida. I've known about her for a long time, her and Rhamat [Alhassan]. So, when I saw Carli in France, I was like, ‘Oh no.’ And then I saw that she was on my team this year, and I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’”
Before teaming up with Snyder on the Rise, Ka'aha'aina-Torres returned stateside to play with LOVB Austin in 2025. She helped the team capture the championship in the league’s inaugural season, gaining experience in building a winning culture from the ground up.
After a successful season, Ka'aha'aina-Torres became the first LOVB player to make the jump over to Major League Volleyball.
“I think LOVB is a great league and they have their own vision for promoting women’s volleyball across the country,” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said. “But I needed to try something else. I had been in Austin for a few years, and a change of scenery to reestablish myself as a player is always nice. I experienced that in Europe, figuring out who I was as a professional. It’s easy to get into a rhythm when you stay in one place too long, so this is a chance to grow and continue promoting the sport.”
Testing herself at every level also led Ka'aha'aina-Torres to opportunities with the U.S. Women’s National Team. In 2025, she competed for her country in both the Volleyball Nations League and the FIVB Women’s World Championship, gaining invaluable reps against the world’s best players. It pushed her skills and mental game to new heights, giving her a deeper sense of strategy and court awareness.
“I always thought everything was very simple, and you just go out there and play volleyball,” she said. “But playing with and against some of the best people in the world, it’s like a chess match. As a setter, you’re trying to anticipate things and see them before they happen. There’s so much more strategy than I realized, and that’s what makes it so fun.”
For Ka'aha'aina-Torres, setting is her own Queen’s Gambit. Each set is a move on the board, positioning her teammates for success while staying one step ahead of the opposition. Every decision requires foresight, precision, and creativity.
While her moves might appear unconventional at times, the results speak for themselves.
“My setting style is a little unorthodox,” she said. “I hold the ball a little longer than most people and use my body to be deceptive with the blockers on the other side. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations because that’s where growth happens. My job is to see what everybody can do and push them, so I try to be the little ringleader out there.”
The pieces on the Rise’s chess board excite Ka'aha'aina-Torres, especially when it comes to the team’s dynamic hitters.
“I think a lot of the hitters are really fast, which is fun,” she said. “We tried to run a quick offense in the national team gym, but these hitters are, dare I say, faster. Pushing this team to its fullest potential while I continue to make myself better for the national team all goes hand in hand. If I can do my job here and take it into that, it’s a win-win situation.”
The balance between setting up her new team for success and pursuing international ambitions is never far from Ka'aha'aina-Torres’ mind. The next major global milestone, the 2027 World Championships co-hosted by the United States and Canada, sits on the horizon, even as the 2028 Olympic dream remains her ultimate target.
“You just have to enjoy the process,” Ka'aha'aina-Torres said about the rigorous training involved with being on the U.S. National Team. “There are so many days where you feel imposter syndrome, where you wonder if you even belong. But it is important to be where your feet are. You can wish a practice went better or that you handled something differently, but appreciating the opportunities in front of you matters most.”
She credits mentors like Jordyn Poulter, Rachel Fairbanks and Cami Miner for shaping that mindset. Learning from setters who have been on the world’s biggest stages and succeeded has pushed her to absorb everything she can.
“I tried to be a sponge,” she said about being with the national team this past summer. “I listened to how they think and picked their brains. Poulter has been to two Olympics and medaled in both [winning gold at the 2020 Tokyo Games and being named the tournament’s Best Setter]. Having someone like her, who is eager to teach and invest in me, meant a great deal.”
Now, with her feet planted firmly in Grand Rapids, she is channeling that same openness to learn into her first MLV season. Her mind is always moving, but she finds ways to stay grounded — journaling to decompress, taking long walks, and trying to spend time outside, though West Michigan’s winter will make that a new challenge. Through it all, her focus remains the same: be present and invest fully into where she is now.
When asked what a successful first season in snowy Grand Rapids would look like, Ka'aha'aina-Torres didn’t mince words: “Winning a championship.”