Princeville Princes Volleyball: 2026 Schedule, Results and Roster
Princeville Princes · Princeville, Illinois
Latest result: lost 0-2 at Brimfield on September 2. Now 2-7. Next: Midland at home, Tuesday September 8, 7:00.
2026: 2-7 · Coach: Ashley Lauber · 2025: 11-21, fifth in the Lincoln Trail
Six matches already played — more than any other area team — at a school whose best sporting years came on a softball diamond.
2026 so far
- Aug 24 — beat Roanoke-Benson, 2-0
- Aug 25 — lost at IVC, 0-2
- Aug 27 — lost at Illini Bluffs, 0-2
- Aug 29 — beat Greenview 2-0, lost to Mercer County 0-2 and Elmwood 0-2 in a home multi-team event
Princeville has played a heavier opening schedule than anyone else in the area and is finding the results hard to come by, with five of the six matches ending in straight sets either way.
Aug 31 — lost to Midwest Central 0-2. Sept 2 — lost at Brimfield 0-2. Two more straight-sets defeats.
2025
The Princes went 11-21 overall and 6-5 in conference, fifth of twelve — a winning record inside the Lincoln Trail from a team well under .500 overall.
The postseason ended on October 27, losing to Putnam County 25-23, 25-21 — two close sets, no third.
September schedule
| Date | Opponent | Site |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 31 | Midwest Central | Home |
| Sept 2 | at Brimfield | Away |
| Sept 8 | Midland | Home |
| Sept 10 | at Elmwood | Away |
| Sept 15 | at Henry-Senachwine | Away |
| Sept 16 | at ROWVA/Williamsfield † | Away |
| Sept 17 | at Peoria Christian | Away |
| Sept 19 | Mendon Unity | Home |
| Sept 23 | at United † | Away |
| Sept 24 | Monmouth-Roseville | Home |
| Sept 28 | at Wethersfield † | Away |
† Lincoln Trail Conference.
September 28 at Wethersfield is the hardest fixture on the card — the 3-1 side that has finished first or second in the conference in each of the last two seasons.
Where Princeville’s trophies came from
The school has never won a state championship in any sport. It has come close twice, and both times in softball.
2016: Class 1A state runner-up. Princeville went 34-4, beat Fisher 7-1 in the semifinal, and lost the championship game 3-0 to Hardin Calhoun — a game in which Paige Lane struck out sixteen and still lost.
2017: third place at 26-9, beating Heyworth 6-3.
The football team was state runner-up in 1975. That is the whole trophy case.
The school
Princeville enrolls 191 students in a town of 1,636, and is the only Lincoln Trail school in Peoria County — which means longer bus rides to conference matches than any of its rivals face.
For a school that size it fields an unusually broad programme: football, basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, cross country, track, golf, cheerleading — and a bass fishing team.
The mascot is not a crown but an armoured knight on horseback with a shield and jousting lance. More on the Princes →
A gap we would like filled
Princeville’s volleyball roster is not published anywhere we can find — MaxPreps lists zero players for 2026, and no assistant coaches.
Send us a roster and we will publish it.
The postseason
State semifinals Friday, November 13, finals Saturday, November 14, at CEFCU Arena in Normal, Class 1A first on both days.
October 2026 schedule
| Date | Opponent | Site | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon, Oct 5 | at Galva | Away | 7:30 p.m. |
| Wed, Oct 7 | Ridgewood | Home | 7:00 p.m. |
| Sat, Oct 10 | Farmington | Home | 12:00 p.m. |
| Wed, Oct 14 | at Abingdon-Avon | Away | 6:00 p.m. |
| Mon, Oct 19 | Bureau Valley | Home | 7:00 p.m. |
| Wed, Oct 21 | at Knoxville | Away | 7:00 p.m. |
| Thu, Oct 22 | at Delavan | Away | 5:30 p.m. |
Eight regionals, and a sectional round that has never fallen
Princeville’s IHSA record is 503-362-3, a .581 winning percentage across 35 seasons dating to 1974-75 — and unlike several schools in this group, the Princes’ filing is current through 2025-26. That matters. When we cite this number, it is a real all-time mark rather than a total that stopped being updated a decade ago.
Five hundred wins is a threshold most small Illinois programs never reach. Princeville got there on consistency rather than on any single dominant era, and the regional titles bear that out: 1985-86, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2015-16, 2019-20, 2021-22 and 2022-23. Eight in all, spread across four decades, with a three-year run from 2009 through 2012 and another pair in the early 2020s.
There is a hard ceiling in that history, and it is worth stating plainly: Princeville has never won a sectional championship. Eight regional plaques, no sectional, no super-sectional appearance, no state finals berth. The Princes have reached the sectional round eight times and lost there eight times. For a program with more than 500 wins, that is the one line in the record that stands out — and the one a 2026 team could rewrite.
The most recent season on file is 2025-26: 11-21 under Ashley Lauber, a step back from the 2021-22 and 2022-23 regional teams.
Who is coaching in 2026
Ashley Lauber returns as head coach. This is one of the cleaner attributions in our area — MaxPreps and the IHSA agree, and Lauber has been the coach of record since 2023-24. Where several neighboring programs have contradictory or missing coach listings, Princeville’s is solid.
What we have not been able to confirm
- The 2026 roster, which has not been posted publicly.
- Whether the October 10 Farmington match at noon is a single match or part of a larger Saturday event — the noon start suggests a tournament rather than a dual.
If you can fill either gap, send it over.
The 500-win club, and the wall both members keep hitting
Two programs in this coverage area have passed 500 all-time volleyball wins: Princeville, at 503, and Knoxville, at 649. Neither has ever won a sectional championship.
Between them that is nineteen regional titles — eight for the Princes, eleven for the Blue Bullets — and nineteen losses in the round that follows. It is a strange piece of symmetry for two schools twenty-odd miles apart, and it makes the October 21 trip to Knoxville the most quietly interesting date on this schedule: two of the winningest programs in the region, both stuck at exactly the same ceiling.
The context that softens it: Class 1A and 2A sectionals in this part of the state have long run through programs like Wethersfield, which owns eighteen regionals, two sectionals and a third-place state finish. Losing a sectional is often just losing to the one team in the bracket that was always going to win it.
Worth noting on the record’s reliability — Princeville’s is one of the few IHSA volleyball files in this area that is both current and complete, filed through 2025-26 with no missing seasons. Bureau Valley’s stops in 2019, Knoxville’s in 2021, Stark County’s in 2017. When we cite 503-362-3, we are citing a number we can stand behind.
Send us results
Volleyball gets a fraction of the coverage football does around here, and almost none of these matches are written up anywhere. If you have a result, a stat line or a photo, send it in — we post them as they come and correct errors the same day.
Records from MaxPreps schedule pages, cross-checked where the site’s own pages disagree. Postseason results via the Peoria Journal Star. All area volleyball standings →
