Creighton's Kirsten Bernthal Booth is the VBM national coach of the year
When Kirsten Bernthal Booth took over the Creighton women’s program 14 years ago, she had one major goal in mind — get her team to the NCAA Tournament. She was a long way from becoming the 2016 VolleyballMag.com national coach of the year.
Creighton finally got there in 2010 and since then the Bluejays have made it a habit of going to the big dance, with NCAA appearances in six of the last seven seasons, punctuated by this year’s run to the regional final where it lost to Texas.
But Bernthal Booth, who took over a program that went 3-22 the year before she arrived in Omaha, Neb.,admits she was a bit uneasy about her team’s prospects after a rocky non-conference start to the 2016 season.
“We were 0-3 in fifth sets during non-con and we lost two of those three very badly,” she recalled. “We seemed passive and scared. I remember telling the staff at that point I didn’t know how good we were going to be if we couldn’t handle the pressure and __play when it counts.”
Bernthal Booth’s charges became quick studies in the art of winning, going on a run that included Big East Conference regular-season and tournament titles for a third year in a row, as well as a 3-1 run in the NCAAs, with all three victories coming in five.
Creighton beat Northern Iowa and then fifth-seeded Kansas and No. 12 Michigan before getting swept by Texas. Creighton finished No. 9 in the final AVCA coaches poll, the program’s highest ever.
“It was fun seeing them learn how to win,” said Bernthal Booth, 291-153 after a 29-7 mark this season.
“During non-con, I felt like we didn’t know how to win. We got on that run in the Big East and we figured things out. We figured out how to __play with our backs against the wall. We had a great group here that was committed since we started strength and conditioning back in January.”
But ask Creighton players their opinion of Bernthal Booth as a coach and Xs and Os rank far down the list.
“She’s authentic on and off the court,” senior middle blocker Lauren Smith says. “She’s a real role model that I looked up to. Being able to build the type of close relationships she has with her players is rare in Division I volleyball. I’m beyond grateful for the work she’s put in and how willing she is to go the extra mile for the players. For her it’s about you and your life and how you leave here a better person. She’s exemplary in all facets of her life.”
Creighton sophomore outside-right side Jaali Winters was sold on Bernthal Booth since her recruiting process began in her hometown of Ankeny, Iowa.
“It’s so easy to see how authentic and genuine she is,” Winters said. “The way she talks to us, I wish every girl could hear that. She’s so inspiring and so empowering. She cares about us more as people than players.”
Winters is a particular fan of Bernthal Booth’s lunch-and-learn sessions during the preseason where the coach brings in female guest speakers to talk to the team.
“One lady from the Air Force, for lack of better words, was a bad-ass,” Winters said. “She had been through some crazy life-and-death situations and came out on top every time. It was great to hear her life experiences. Those lunch-and-learns allowed us to learn from strong women.”
Smith said because of Bernthal Booth and Creighton, “I couldn’t ask for a better place to finish growing up,” she said.
Bernthal Booth, who was was a state-champion high-school tennis player growing up in Lincoln, Neb., was a standout setter at Truman State in Missouri.
She says the secret ingredients to the sustained success she’s had at Creighton include being able to pitch many superlatives about the university to recruits as well as having good continuity on her coaching staff. Assistant Angie Oxley Behrens has been with Bernthal Booth since the beginning in Omaha.
“I would send my kids to Creighton. I believe in the experience,” Bernthal Booth said. “I’ve also had a great staff all the way through. Angie has been great. What we’ve been able to do is build a culture with great players and a great strength.
“The one thing Angie and I have been most proud of is we’ve been able to continue to take steps each year. We’re not a one-hit wonder. Our goal has been to keep building on the foundation and have the players enjoy the experience here. We’re building young women and we’re building relationships. It’s process-driven. I treat them as I would want my daughters to be treated.”
Inky Ajanaku of Stanford attacks against Minnesota in the NCAA semifinals/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Winning the national championship did not make Inky Ajanaku the VolleyballMag.com player of the year for the second time.
But it didn’t hurt.
And certainly her performance in Stanford’s six NCAA Tournament victories, including Saturday’s four-set win over Texas in the national-championship match, cemented the award for the senior from Tulsa, Okla., whose senior season became an inspiration for the college volleyball world.
Like Ajanaku, Texas freshman Micaya White had to watch from the sidelines in 2015, having to wait an extra year to get on the court. But when she did join the Longhorns in earnest, she had an incredible season and is the VolleyballMag.com national freshman of the year.
Just three days after winning it all and back in Tulsa, Ajanaku was already hitting the gym and planning her future. She’s finished with school, having earned both her undergraduate degree from Stanford in human biology and her master’s in biology.
“I feel like I still have a lot of work to do with my knee and my body and figuring out a great way to continue on my career,” Ajanaku said. “I’m really proud of the progress but I know this is not the end result and I have a vision of what I want the vision to be and it’s keeping me pretty focused.”
That might be scary to future opponents when you consider that the 6-foot-3 high-jumping middle blocker hit .407 this season. Ajanaku had 360 kills, 89 in the NCAA Tournament alone. She also had 192 blocks — 16 solo — averaging 1.54 per set.
Most likely Inky — whose father is from Nigeria and whose full name is Oyinkansola OluSeun Ajanaku — will __play professionally, but only with a team that “knows my situation.
“I want to go to a team that’s understanding and willing to work with me and that could be a really good step with me. If not, I could stay in America and still train.” She said that she’s consulted with USA women’s Olympic coach Karch Kiraly.
Certainly Ajanaku will be in the mix to __play with the national team with an eye on the 2020 Olympics. It was in the summer of 2015 when competing internationally for the USA that she blew out her knee.
It made for an exhaustive physical, mental and emotional rehab, about which Ajanaku openly discussed, especially the past few weeks in NCAA tourney news conferences.
When she arrived at The Farm in 2013, she was part of a class that included three other four-year starters in Madi Bugg, Jordan Burgess and Brittany Howard.
“I showed up and was thinking, ‘Wow. I’m incredibly unqualified to be here. I don’t know who I duped to let me into this university.’ But don’t give away the gifts that are given to you in the world even if they were addressed to the wrong person. I was really excited to be there, but I didn’t think I was going to play freshman year.”
She played. Ajanaku made the Pac-12 all-freshman team and was an AVCA honorable-mention All-American after averaging 2.42 kills and 1.23 blocks per set. It was the tip of the iceberg.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she admitted. “I was athletic. I could put a ball down in good circumstances but I had a hard time in compromising ones. But that year did teach me a lot and the coaches’ confidence in me helped to have confidence in myself and helped propel me into the learning process of volleyball. It made me mature faster than I probably would have on my own.”
As a sophomore she was a first-team AVCA All-American (only third team for VBM) after hitting .438 and averaging 2.42 kills and 1.38 blocks.
She was the 2014 VBM national player of the year and AVCA first-teamer again after a season in which she hit .428 and averaged 3.48 kills and 1.14 blocks.
But everything changed the next summer.
“To be honest: I’ve been incredibly lucky in my life and incredibly privileged with the stuff and the opportunities that I’ve been given,” Ajanaku said. “That makes it easy for you to be confident.
“And when I tore my ACL I wasn’t confident that I was going to get back on the court, I wasn’t confident that I was going to be the player I used to be. I wasn’t confident that I wasn’t going to hurt myself going back out there.
“When I was faced with that amount of adversity where I had never really been challenged before I really had to figure out ways to grow my confidence. It felt like it had been stepped on and it was something I aways relied on. I knew I was an athletic player and knew I could be a really great teammate, but I thought that the thing that made me more successful than others was my mindset. It was my confidence and when I didn’t have that I didn’t know what kind of player I was.
“I knew from the beginning of preseason I had to get that back.”
It was a process, of course. Stanford was upset in its first match of the season, but Ajanaku had 11 kills, hit .429 and had eight blocks against San Diego. But she was up and down, sometimes putting up great numbers, but struggling at times and her slumps seemed to mirror the team’s. At one point Stanford was 10-5 overall, 4-3 in the Pac-12, before finishing 27-7, 15-5.
“But I couldn’t find that confidence halfway through the season,” Ajanaku admitted.
“I was shaken. I didn’t know how to play, I was second-guessing everything I did. I had never played like that before.”
She understands this much: “It helped me grow a lot and I feel like it helped me face other adversities I might face in life.”
None of that was lost on her Cardinal teammates.
“She’s one of the strongest individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with and knowing,” said Stanford’s Kelsey Humphreys, the team’s only other senior. “And all the struggle that she’s talking about, you would never know by the way she walkedin the gym or the way she interacted with any of our teammates.”
Stanford eventually caught fire as coach John Dunning made some lineup changes in a season filled with well-documented twists and turns, mostly caused by injuries. And after upsetting second-seeded Minnesota in the national semifinals, the sixth-seeded Cardinal knocked off Texas 25-21, 25-19, 18-25, 25-21.
Before the match, Ajanaku said she told the team that it had to play great volleyball and that win or lose that would be enough.
“She let us believe in ourselves,” Humphreys said. “She’s an amazing leader, and I think that’s part of the growth she had in her year off.”
As her teammates went wild, Ajanaku had to ponder the moment.
“It’s a cliche, but it’s really surreal,” Ajanaku said. “We had match point a couple of times and I was focused on the game that once we won I didn’t run onto the court because I was still in game mode: Next point, next point! Even though I knew we had won. I was extremely excited but I wasn’t extremely emotional because I was still in that mode and it takes me a while to come down from it.”
It took a while, but soon she felt it.
“After we got back to the hotel and we had the trophy and John gave us a little speech, I realized that this was everything I had been working for these past five years and it’s finally here. And all I could think about was how we didn’t play great volleyball in the third set and how I would change some things.”
She laughed heartily.
“But I realized how I’d wanted this championship for so long and now that I have it I realize that’s a real success if I play well and play a game I’m proud of.”
And with that, Ajanaku said she had to get to the gym.
In the NCAA championship match, she had 10 blocks, hit .419 with 16 kills in 31 swings, but one of her three errors?
“I thought I’d be relaxed after I won and say that’s it, ‘I’m never playing volleyball again,’ but all I want to do is get back on the court because I remember that my last hit was out of bounds and I want to make sure my arm is up fast enough so my next hit is in bounds.”
She laughed again.
“I’m having a little case study on myself. It’s interesting how I reacted to it.”
Texas freshman Micaya White
In a year where NCAA volleyball seemed at times dominated by freshmen, White stood out.
The 6-foot-1 outside hitter led Texas with 462 kills — 80 in the NCAA Tournament —averaged 4.02 kills per set, hit .274, had a team-best 24 aces, had 77 blocks — 11 solo — and 252 digs.
But the highly touted player from Dallas and the daughter of former NBA standout Randy White arrived in Austin already injured. She had a stress fracture in her left tibia.
“I guess I had it for about eight months before college,” she recalled. “I went to a couple of doctors and they didn’t see anything.”
She said the doctors she visited told her not to be concerned, “so I didn’t worry about it. And I got to college and doctor said, ‘I don’t know how you’ve been playing. Because you’re basically playing on a broken leg.”
So this high-flying player with a whip of an arm and a vicious jump serve today has a rod and two screws in her leg.
But a year off made her a better player.
“It helped me so much because I got to watch and learn so much more about my game. I got to watch other players like (former USC star) Samantha Bricio, who’s one of my all-time favorite outside hitters growing up. Getting to watch her season and just comparing and learning was a really big advantage. A lot of kids coming out of high school don’t get that advantage.
“At the time I didn’t enjoy it, Jerritt and I had a couple of words my true freshman year, but I take it as the biggest blessing.”
White finally got to start practicing with the Longhorns late in the 2015 season and then had all of the 2016 spring season.
“It was rough at first,” she admitted, “getting used to playing with metal in your leg.
“But, yeah, it was kind of like unleashing an animal. I couldn’t get out of the gym. I’ve continually wanted to work with Erik (Sullivan, UT assistant coach) or Jerritt or our strength coach. I just wanted to be better than I was coming in.”
White had 14 kills in the season opener at Oregon, but in the next match, against Nebraska, she was awful, with three kills in 21 swings and a -.143 hitting percentage. As an aside, when Texas knocked off Nebraska in the NCAA semifinals, she had seven kills, hit .269, and had eight digs and five blocks.
“When we first started practicing (in August) I could feel that our team was going to be really good,” White said. “Just because of how hard everyone wanted to work and how excited everyone was. Usually some are in it and some are out of it, but everyone was driven and I knew we’d have a lot of fight in us.”
Texas never had a losing streak as it finished 27-5. The Longhorns, by all accounts, had a fantastic season. But White was none too happy after losing the NCAA title match, although she had 17 kills, 11 digs and six blocks. She was also not happy that Texas finished second to Kansas in the Big 12 and said that next year she thinks the Longhorns will be even more driven to win it all.
Like Ajanaku, she hit the gym this week as well, getting in some volleyball time with her old club, TAV.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished, but I always set a high standard for myself and think I can do better,” White said. “I feel I’m blessed to receive the awards I did, but this is a team sport and we’re not winning the Big 12 and the national championship, I could have done more.
“So that’s what I’ve been thinking about the past couple of days since I’ve been home. So we do win the Big 12 and we win the national championship next year.”
USC's Kelly Claes (left) and Sara Hughes (right) won the 2016 Pac-12 pairs title, but the NCAA currently does not offer a pairs championship. /Ed Chan, VBshots.com
The NCAA decides individual titles in other individual/team sports, like tennis, gymnastics and golf. But when it launched beach, the individuals were left out.
By all accounts, however, the inaugural NCAA Beach Championship last May in Gulf Shores, Ala., was a smashing success. Perfect weather, great matches, decent crowds and great hospitality from the host city on the Alabama Gulf Coast.
But many in the volleyball world were disappointed that there was not a pairs competition, as there were at the AVCA championships the previous years before the event was converted to an NCAA title event, or even at the Pac-12 Championship.
The issue is complex on an NCAA administration level, a college administration level, and the player level. VBM’s Lee Feinswog interviewed NCAA Beach chair Marilyn Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano during the event in Gulf Shores. Her answer was most diplomatic.
“It’s on our strategic plan, we’re planning on bring it back and making it a part of this championships,” said Moniz-Kaho’ohanohano, the senior women’s administrator and assistant athletic director at Hawai’i. “It’s a long tradition and history that pairs are an important part of beach volleyball. It’s not been abandoned, it’s on the docket.”
Timetable: “We don’t know, because funding is the issue. Very shortly.” To see the full interview:
It’s not likely individual pairs whose teams didn’t qualify for the NCAA Beach tournament will be included in 2017, but we visited with five beach volleyball coaches, the NCAA beach chair, and a former player and offer the following:
Pepperdine head beach coach Nina Matthies, chats with Waves Victoria Adelhelm and Jazmine Orozco/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Nina Matthies (head coach/Pepperdine):
“It went through a championship committee, which is not a volleyball committee, or beach volleyball committee, an NCAA championship committee that decides all championships for all sports, and when the original paperwork from five years ago when we started all this came through, that first proposal was only for a team championship. It’s a team sport. It’s not a pairs sport. It’s not easy to pick up a championship. There are a lot of emerging sports that never get there. They’re still on the back burner. When the championship committee reviewed the proposal, it was a proposal looking to finance eight teams to go to a national championship. In the past we all paid ourselves to go to the AVCA championship, although the AVCA helped with hotels and things. Each institution sponsored themselves.
“The NCAA is putting in quite a bit of money, effort, and staff. We needed to get in the door. Now that we’re in the door, we’ll see how this year and next year goes, we have time to put in the ground work and keep building. I’m a team championship gal, and I have been from the beginning; the athletes can __play pairs all summer, they can __play USA/AVP/FIVB, etc.
“I think the collegiate sport that we’re creating is so unique, that is the essence of what collegiate beach volleyball is, so I’m not opposed to a pair championship, but I want the team championship to flourish.”
Jeff Hall led Hawai’i’s Rainbow Wahines to a Big West title in 2016/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Jeff Hall (head coach/Hawaii):
“I’m super disappointed in the choice by the NCAA; I’m super disappointed in the Big West, and the administration that decided to go against the best wishes of the coaches. The back story there, is that the coaches voted, in a conference call, to have a pairs championship in the Big West, to try and mimic the Pac-12, to show the NCAA that this is an important part of beach volleyball at the championship level, and it is the root of beach volleyball. Quite frankly, we don’t need the pairs; we’re going to be a nationally recognized program. What the pairs program does for other programs that aren’t as deep as us is give their student athletes a championship experience. Post season experience, which all administrations like to see. For example, Grand Canyon’s No. 1 pair is really special. They’re very, very good, but they don’t have an opportunity to showcase it.
“Programs that are trying to grow are going to be left behind and maybe get dropped in the future because they are not worthy of having post season experience. That’s how you’re measured often as a coach or as a program, and when you’re cutting out the pairs, you’re cutting out the opportunity. It’s fun to see other schools, smaller schools, schools that don’t have the budget, giving them the opportunity. To lose that is kind of sad.”
FSU head coach Brooke Niles lays out for a dig at NVL Seattle 2015/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Brooke Niles (head coach/Florida State):
“Collegiate sports are mostly team sports; and I think for this to grow into more programs, to continue the growth we’ve had, we need to make it a team sport. You’re not going to have a college start a sport to garner an individual award or championship. I do think there’s room for it, if we can go after the tennis model, where there’s a pairs season in the fall, and a team season in the spring, it will add to the NCAA experience. Right now beach volleyball has the fewest competitions. The team competition is really exciting because right now anyone can win it.”
Beth Van Fleet, head coach for Georgia State, shown here in AVP competition at Santa Barbara in 2009/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Beth Van Fleet (head coach/Georgia State):
“I think that is was a good strategic move for the NCAA in their first year. I understand why they made that decision, I know it was a hard decision to make, and I expect that they will re-introduce the pairs competition, hopefully within the next year or two. It’s a very valuable piece, I think there are so many incredible pairs around the country that don’t get to compete at the national level because they don’t have the depth in their roster. And speaking from experience, our first year we had Lane Carico here, and luckily,the AVCA had the pairs competition, and she was able to compete at the national level with her partner Katie Madewell, and they ended up taking third place in the country, and they wouldn’t have been there if it was only a team competition.
“I think that a lot of schools and conferences are having discussions about how to introduce pairs competition in fall play, and also within the conferences. It’s great that the coaches see the need for the pairs play, and that we are doing our best to make sure that there are opportunities for the pairs. I think it makes sense. You have to look at it from so many angles. You have to look at it from the administrative side and see what the administrative costs are if you’re basically running a season in the fall and a season in the spring, and how much of a deterrent it would be for new schools to add beach.
“We don’t want it to be an expensive sport to add, because right now that’s one of the more attractive elements of this game from the administration point of view. As a school that already has beach, I would love to see pairs in the fall, because it gives the athletes something to work for. We practice from August through February to play for eight weeks. Which is hard. It’s hard to stay motivated, and stay focused, to create those competitive advantages . It would benefit the student athlete experience by adding something in the fall that is financially viable for institutions.
Lane Carico would have been denied the opportunity to participate in postseason play at Georgia State but for the AVCA pairs competition, where she finished third in 2013.
Lane Carico (AVP star and former college beach standout):
“The NCAA pairs competition at the championships is a huge opportunity for individuals to get out in the sand in a situation where it’s just them and their teammate. They have to find a way to win and to battle it out and be mentally tough, not having the support of all their other teammates and college-mates competing along side them. Any chance there is to get more girls out on the sand in a diverse group, the better, and the better to grow the sport.
Arizona beach volleyball head coach Steve Walker advises Madison and McKenna Witt at the 2016 Pac-12 championships, which included a pairs championship.
Steve Walker (head coach, Arizona):
“We’re disappointed that there isn’t a pairs competition. It’s a high level brand of volleyball; if you look at the semifinals last year, three of the four teams participating in the pairs, Grand Canyon, Loyola Marymount, and Arizona, weren’t in the team competition. I see where the NCAA is coming from, it is a team competition. It is more fulfilling to bring the whole group. ”
On splitting the beach volleyball season into two seasons:
“You’ll miss out on the multi-sport athletes, the indoor athletes that cross over won’t have an opportunity to compete for a national championship.”
Stetson beach volleyball coach Kristina Hernandez sees both pros and cons to adding a pairs championship/Stetson Athletics
Kristina Hernandez (head coach/Stetson):
“There’s pros and cons to not having a pairs competition. The pros are, you have to focus more on your whole team; you have to be good one to five if you want to win a national championship. We all want the pairs to come back, it’s more teams competing at the end of the year, and it gives those schools that maybe just have a strong number one seed, the opportunity to continue their season especially when a lot of teams have number one pairs with great records, and them being able to battle it out and play at that high level, I don’t think it’s bad for the sport. It’s always drawn big crowds and a lot of excitement.”
UCLA coach Stein Metzger is shown here in AVP competition in 2008/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Stein Metzger (head coach/UCLA):
“I have to say that I’m really warming up to the team competition; it’s become very enjoyable for me, and this is somebody that came from the pro circuit, where it’s all about you and your partner and there wasn’t any team competition ever, so it took some time to get used to, but I’m really enjoying the team competition. That being said, I think there’s a real missed opportunity; it’s a shame for teams that aren’t able to make it to the pairs competition.
“If we see the same teams getting into the team competition year after year, it will be another reason why it will be unfortunate not to have a pairs competition. Those other teams are going to need an opportunity to break in, and typically when you’re building a program, it’s hard to find ten players at a high level and to have some sort of depth. To be able to chip away and get two or four good players, and break through at the pairs level, is great. And that’s where we’ve been. We’ve never made it to the team competition, we’ve only made it in the pairs until this year. There are a lot of schools out there that don’t have the depth to even knock on the door of the team competition. It would be great if we could find a way to get the pairs competition back in and make it work. I think it would encourage the growth of the sport.”
It’s not as simple as it seems
Factors include: – The logistics of extending a championships from three to a minimum of six days – Can beach volleyball adopt a model like tennis with dual seasons? – How might a dual season affect crossover athletes? – Some coaches believe that a pairs competition promotes parity in program development – Can the NCAA justify the additional expense of supporting what is essentially a second championship? – Will having a second competition and/or season increase college administration costs to the point that it could hinder the sport? In the end, most volleyball people would like to see the pairs added, but cost and TV coverage will enter greatly into the discussion. VBM, of course, favors having the individual pairs.
Although many disagree on the particulars of these and other factors, all agree that having a pairs competition is an exciting way to showcase the athletic talents of today’s players. Let’s hope that the pairs competition gets reinstated, and reinstated soon.
Stanford celebrates its four-set NCAA-title victory over Texas/Ed Chan VBshots.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The 66-year-old coach just had to take a moment.
Barely a minute after the volleyball gods had — of all people — senior Kelsey Humphreys bump set an out-of-system ball to freshman Kathryn Plummer, who in turn bounced it off the Texas block and out of bounds, John Dunning simply needed a quick second or two to himself.
So as his kids — and really, when you’re 66 and four of your starters are freshmen, they’re truly kids — celebrated winning the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship with a 25-21, 25-19, 18-25, 25-21 victory, Dunning bent over and rested his hands on his knees, staring down at the floor.
“You know, it’s overwhelming. You put so much into this and this is just a group that’s just fun to be with. I love being around them and at that point it was kind of like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is actually real.’It’s overwhelming,” Dunning said as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning.
“So I took a deep breath and was separate from people for a second so that I didn’t fall on the fall on the floor and cry or throw up or something. It just was overwhelming.”
This was Dunning’s 16th year at Stanford. He’d won two NCAA titles in his previous job, at Pacific, and then took Stanford to the 2001 and 2004 NCAA championships. And while most every season the Cardinal are in the national-championship discussion, it had been a long 12 years that including losing in the final match in 2006, 2007 and 2008.
And it’s doubtful that when he won in 2004 Dunning took out his cell phone and snapped a picture of one of his players as he did of Inky Ajanaku during their post-match news conference. Here’s a snapshot of what the senior middle did on Saturday night: 16 kills in 31 swings for a .419 hitting percentage, eight blocks — one solo — and a trophy of her own for being the MVP of the tournament.
Stanford’s Inky Ajanaku is tournament MVP. /Ed Chan, VBshots.com
“Man, I’m excited. I’ve been wanting this for a really long time and it wasn’t exactly the way I thought it was going to be and, you know what, that’s life,” said Ajanaku, who missed all of last season recovering from a knee injury. “Life throws a lot of things at you.And it throws a lot of opportunities and a lot of obstacles at you.”
The way she overcame them was remarkable.
Sixth-seeded Stanford, which was down 0-2 at Wisconsin in the regional final before beating the Badgers a week ago, knocked off second-seeded Minnesota on Thursday in the semifinals.
Against Wisconsin, Ajanaku had 20 kills and 11 blocks. Against Minnesota, she had 15 kills and nine blocks.
“We showed two nights ago that we were good enough to beat good teams.And we showed it in Wisconsin in a very, very difficult setting,” Dunning said. “And so I would guess that it’s reasonable for us to think we really had a good chance to win. But you don’t know how people are going to react when you get to the race, to the finals. And it’s like you go through the prelims in the Olympics and you get to the race and you don’t know how people are going to react.”
That’s the thing with first-year players.
“And I thought our freshmen were going to react great. They’re goofier than unbelievable, and they were exactly that way before the game. All they do is sing and dance. And I think they are going to get tired, that we should train more, because they’re going to use it all up before the game starts because they’re dancing so much. But you kind of roll with some stuff.But that’s the way we are.”
Stanford finished the season 27-7 as it won for the 10th time in a row. More importantly, it was the school’s seventh NCAA title, tying it for the all-time lead with Penn State.
Plummer, the 6-foot-6 right side who was converted to an outside hitter at midseason, had 18 kills, hit .325, had nine digs and was perfect on 29 serve-receive chances. She had 15 kills against Minnesota.
Another 6-6 freshman, middle Audriana Fitzmorris, had 10 kills, hit .375, and went on a serving run to start the fourth set that completely took Texas out of it as Stanford built a 6-0 lead from which the Longhorns never recovered.
Junior Merete Lutz, the 6-8 right side, had seven kills and four blocks. Freshman libero Morgan Hentz had 27 digs and freshman setter Jenna Gray had 51 assists, three kills, three blocks and three digs.
Cat McCoy of Texas chases down a ball off hitter coverage while Chloe Collins trails/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
Fourth-seeded Texas, which beat top-seeded Nebraska in the semifinals, ended its season 27-5 and lost in the NCAA final match for the second straight year. Texas, which won its first NCAA title in 1988, won the 2012 title, in 2013 and 2014 lost in the semifinals and last year lost to Nebraska. “Yeah, I think they played extremely well,” 16th-year Texas coach Jerritt Elliott said. “Hentz played phenomenal. I think their middles really hurt us which was kind of a common theme throughout the season when we ran up against good middles. But I thought Hentz was a big difference maker. And I thought Kathryn Plummer played very well tonight.”
Freshman outside hitter Micaya White continued her outstanding __play and led the Longhorns with 17 kills, 11 digs and six blocks. Junior right side Ebony Nwanebu added 16 kills. Sophomore Yaazie Bedart-Ghani had 11 kills and hit .455 and was switched from middle to outside in the third set when senior outside Paulina Prieto Cerame struggled terribly. She had two kills in 26 swings and hit -.231 on what was likely the worst match of her career.
Freshman middle Morgan Johnson had seven kills and five blocks, capping off a season in which she was thrust into the lineup when Texas lost All-American senior middle Chiaka Ogbogu when she was declared academically ineligible just before the season began.
“Things always change and that’s the responsibility. So this is the group we had and that’s the way they grew and they developed. I couldn’t be more proud of what we did this year and the fight that we had,” Elliott said.
“I mean, late October I don’t think anybody would have picked us to be in the finals and we found a way to make that happen.”
They would have said the same thing about Stanford until Dunning made a mid-match decision to go to a 5-1 with Gray and use Humphreys as a defensive specialist for Lutz, who he moved to the right side. Humphreys, waiting in the wings for three years, finally got to set but then lost the job. It was excruciating for Dunning to have to do it and extremely tough for Humphreys to handle.
Which is why it was so appropriate that she got the set on the match-winning kill. The truth is, neither she nor Stanford might have won this title had Ajanaku not gotten hurt and missed last season.
“I have to say that you would never wish that injury on anyone. But I’m so happy to be able to share this with Inky right now and be with her our senior year,” said Humphreys, who had eight digs and five assists in the match. “And she’s one of the strongest individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing with and knowing. And all the struggle that she’s talking about, you would never know by the way she walked in the gym or the way she interacted with any of our teammates.
“And she let us believe in ourselves. She’s an amazing leader, and I think that’s part of the growth she had in her year off. And I am just so humbled to be able to __play with her, and so honored to just share this with her.”
And for Humphreys, was it all worth it?
“It is so worth it!” she exclaimed.
Humphreys is the daughter of Stanford legend Wendy Rush, who made it to four final fours in her career but never won a title.
“When we won two days ago she said bring one home for the family,” Humphreys said. “ … to be able to share the Stanford experience with her is something I can’t put into words. And I’m really happy to be able to put the Rush name on that trophy.
Attendance at the 2016 NCAA final was second only to 2015 in Omaha/Ed Chan, VBshots.com
The crowd of 17,345 in Nationwide Arena — second for a title match only to last year in Omaha — was treated to two teams playing all out all match.
Texas jumped to an early lead in the first set when Dunning called time down 9-5.
“We did not react very well at the start of the first set. We were way down. Then they calmed down.”
Did they ever.
“And as soon as we did that and came back in the first set, I thought, OK, we’re here, let’s just see what Texas has and if we can match it. Because our reaction was good. We were strong enough to handle the situation, or oblivious enough to handle it, whichever it is.”
Stanford, as it normally does, responded well to the time out and pulled into an 10-10 tie. It stayed close and the score was 20-20 when Stanford closed it out, getting two Ajanaku kills and three blocks in the final five points.
In the second, Stanford trailed 18-16 before going on a 7-0 run that continued into a 9-1 finish to the set that saw Plummer and Fitzmorris get three kills apiece.
Texas owned the third set, but couldn’t keep any of that momentum going. After Stanford got out 6-0, the Longhorns pulled to 7-3, but soon trailed 12-4.
Dunning used a timeout when Texas got to 19-14. The Longhorns got a kill from Bedart-Ghani and Plummer hit long to make it 24-21, before Plummer ended it. The serve sent Hentz sprawling to her right but Humphreys was ready.
”We had like three points lead on them or something like that,” Plummer said. “But we were just focused on the next point. Texas brought out a great service — if you rattle Morgan, you know it’s a good one.
“And then Kelsey had a great set.”
Plummer had to compose herself.
“I don’t know, but it was just an awesome way to end it because it was kind of — this is going to sound weird — but how our season has gone and to end it that way instead of like the smashing kill is kind of just, like, relevant to how we should finish that match.”
Goofy or not, they’re mature on the court and when you add them in with seniors like Ajanaku and Humphreys and juniors like Lutz, it’s quite a mix.
“And that’s what teams that end up winning or have a chance to win the championship, that’s what it usually is, is a really cool mixture of different ages,” Dunning said.
He laughed.
“It’s crazy. And fun.”
***
Next week, VolleyballMag.com will announce its All-American teams and the player, coach and freshman of the year.
NCAA men’s previews begin next week, too.
And if you want to plan ahead, the 2017 NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship is December 14-16 in Kansas City. Mo. Barbecue and volleyball for all.
