BRISTOL, Tenn. – Seniors Jennifer Kandt, Lindsey Musick and Lindsey Vaughn have won 112 matches since arriving in Bristol four years ago.
Their conference winning percentage stands at 92 percent, they’ve qualified for three NAIA Region Tournaments and they’ve never ended a season without winning both the Appalachian Athletic
Conference regular season and tournament titles.
It was fitting, then, that the senior trio was honored on Tuesday night immediately prior to the King College women’s volleyball team clinching its fourth-straight AAC regular season title of the Kandt-Musick-Vaughn era.
King defeated conference opponent Montreat 25-20, 25-18, 25-21 last night at the Student Center Complex, the squad’s 11th straight victory overall. The win ensured that the Tornado entered postseason play as sole proprietor of the regular season championship.
And they did it all on senior night.
“What an accomplishment,” King head coach Chris Toomey said. “Not many players are able to say that after their four years. To come in every year as the favorite and to have that pressure, but to continually play well and bring their game to a high level, that says a lot about them and the leadership they’ve shown.”
After losing its second conference game of the season to Bluefield, a match in which the Tornado once held a 2-0 lead, King won 16-straight AAC contests. Their 17-1 conference record leaves them one game ahead of second-place Bryan College and grants King the No. 1 seed in the conference’s postseason tournament.
The Bluefield match, says Kandt, served as a cattle prod for the remainder of conference play, always reminding the squad that any AAC team had the potential to beat them.
“We’d always talk about it,” Kandt said. “ We’d be like, ‘I remember Bluefield. We can’t let that happen again.’ It stinks that it happened, but we grew off of it, we learned from it and we didn’t let it happen again.”
While King managed to take care of Montreat in three straight games, the Tornado gave the Cavaliers hope in each.
The first game was tied 16-16, before King finished on a 9-4 run. The second game featured nine different ties and King led 20-15 in the third before allowing Montreat to creep back into the game at 23-21.
“I felt like our team was focused and I felt like they were in the match,” Toomey said. “It felt like there was a little bit of energy missing, which is ironic with the significance of the night.”
But Toomey relied on his seniors and they responded.
Kandt and Vaughn, both setters, may not have flown through the air, stealing the glamour with powerful kills, but the duo did their job ably. They combined to dish out 39 assists, and Kandt racked up four kills with clever second-touch lobs.
Musick, an outside hitter, was the beneficiary of the Kandt-Vaughn dispensary, power-swiping six kills across the King Student Center Complex.
“It was just good to finish the way we did,” Kandt said. “It was just a big game, not only for senior night but just to be champions of our conference. I’m just proud of my girls. It’s been a long season ... it felt good to get it done.”
scampbell@bristolnews.com / (276) 645-2543
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