By Marin Murray, News Editor
The women’s volleyball team finished its historic season as outright regular-season Great American Conference champions for the first time in program history with a record of 15-1 in conference play and 26-5 overall.
“I think they exceeded expectations in the majority of the things we wanted to get done,” head coach Allison Frizzell-Kizer said. “We did fall a little bit short at the end, but even that can’t take away from all the joy that happened from this year.” Ultimately, the Tigers fell short of their goal of becoming back-to-back conference tournament champions and earning a bid to the Division II national tournament as they fell to Oklahoma Baptist in the conference tournament. However, the team still had the best season of its Division II era.
“It was a difficult way to end the season, but we had an incredible season,” senior right side and defensive specialist Emma Hill said. “In the grand scheme of things, it’s hard that that was the way our season ended and we didn’t get to go back to the NCAA tournament, but we did so many great things during the regular season.”
Fresh off their 2024 GAC tournament championship win, the team came into this season ranked first in the conference. However, they wanted to prove to other teams in the conference that they deserved that title, a mindset that they carried with them throughout the season.
“I think we did a good job of pushing ourselves throughout the season,” senior setter Courtney Hanson said. “Sometimes it gets hard, but we did a really good job of staying motivated throughout the season, and it ended up working for us.”
A major contributor to their success this year was the bond that the girls had, which was set in the offseason last spring and continued to grow during pre-season. “Everyone enjoyed each other’s company,” Hanson said. “We were able to be ourselves and enjoy the people around us, and I think that ultimately allowed us to be better on the court.”
The team’s culture of trust and celebrating each other’s wins allowed several individual players to earn their right to have their names on the all-time and single-season record boards. “The team records are what mean a little bit more to me,” Hanson said. “Any individual records that I got just show how good we were as a team. My position literally means nothing if I don’t have the people around me, so that’s kind of how I see those things.”
Since the team will graduate eight seniors this year, multiple underclassmen and the seven freshmen the team has signed will be given the opportunity to step up both on and off the court. “I think they will continue to do the same thing,” Hill said. “They are just as hungry as we were this year.” As the Tigers begin to look toward the 2026 season, they plan to build on their success over the last two years and continue the legacy of positivity and perseverance that the seniors have left behind.
