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 Jeff Mayfield interviews Kevin Crawford, LCC
volleyball coach
Part 1
LCC caps 30-win season
with a trip to nationals
National title dream
eludes Angels
[NOV.
9, 2000]
At
one point earlier this season, the Lincoln Christian College women’s
volleyball team had a record of 10-6. It did not appear at that point that
the Angels were going to make a serious bid at another national title.
However, an incredible metamorphosis took place, and LCC put together an
amazing run that resulted in a 30-9 record, a second-place finish at
regionals, an at-large bid to the national tournament and a trip to have
some fun in the sun in Redding, Calif.! The LCC ladies became a true
epitome team with different stars and leaders showing up on different
nights. I met with LCC coach Kevin Crawford (who the LDN believes is one
of the best small-college coaches of any sport) in my office as he was
shaking off the effects of jet lag.
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Q.
Kevin, tell us about the national tournament.
A.
The national tournament was held at Simpson College in Redding,
California. It’s a three-day format, where the first day, Thursday, is
all pool play. Friday concludes pool play in the morning, and then, based
on your pool-play record, you are then seeded for the quarterfinals on
Friday and the semi-finals on Saturday.
Q.
How did LCC advance to the nationals?
A.
There are eight automatic bids and two at-large bids. You get an automatic
bid by winning your region. We played in the championship match of our
region, and we lost to Northland Baptist. We ended up getting an at-large
bid, and that’s how we qualified for the national tournament. When they
seeded the 10 teams we were seeded No. 2. That was probably the highest
that we’ve ever been seeded. If we would have won our region, we would
have been seeded No. 1.
Q.
Walk us through the tournament as to how you played.
A.
Our first match was against the No. 10 seed, Johnson Bible College out of
Tennessee. They beat us in the first game 8-15, and we had to come back to
beat them, 15-13 and 15-8. They came out really loose, and they were
having fun playing. We were the No. 2 seed and knew that we should thump
them…so, it put a lot of pressure on us. I think getting that one out of
the way helped. That took us into a game with the No. 8 seed, Baptist
Bible from Missouri. Unfortunately, we came out and played pretty much the
same way, where we lost the first game 12-15 and had to come back to win
the next two, 15-7 and 15-7. Then we got to play the No. 6 seed, Northland
Baptist. They beat us in the regional, but we had beaten them earlier in
the year. Again, we lost the first game of the match, 9-15. That’s when
we finally got determined that we were going to start playing. We played
much better after that in the next two games, and we were able to beat
them 17-15 and 15-8. So, all in all, it was kind of a struggle on
Thursday.
[to top of second column in
this section] |
Q.
Did the format change on Friday or what happened?
A.
No. We had one more match in pool play. That game was against the No. 4
seed, Clearwater Christian (the eventual national champions), who have
advanced to the championship match in each of the last five years! That was
the first time that I felt like we came out too overly concerned about an
opponent. We lost 9-15 and 2-15. We might have been scared. They have a
mystique about them; they also have the No. 1 player in the country, Julie
Hubbard. She is an outstanding middle blocker. We played tentative, and it
was our worst match of the tournament. That made us 3-1 in pool play, and we
got a No. 2 seed out of our pool. That pitted us against the No. 3 seed of
the other pool in the quarterfinals, which was Mid-America (Okla.) Bible
College. They are a really streaky team. They have three girls that are 6
foot or better, including a girl Sara Nailor, who is a junior that they just
picked up who is outstanding. We couldn’t match up with Nailor. She is on
a much higher level than we are. We lost 8-15, 3-15, 15-7 and 14-16.
Q.
That had to be difficult for you, as you felt you had a chance to win it
all.
A. Yes, I
did. I really thought we had a good chance to win it. But, if you look at
the whole season and if you look at who our team is made up of, we did not
have a star on our team. We had people that could play two or three
positions, and they did. We had Rachel Allen, who may have been our best
freshman, go out with an injury (a torn rotator cuff). In comes her older
sister Sarah, who had been a practice player the previous two years, and she
wins the MVP of our tournament and she makes the all-regional tournament
team! When we get to nationals, Sarah’s down with some kind of a virus
(and had to go to the hospital) and in comes another freshman who plays very
well for us. Even though we did have a couple of All-Americans, we really
don’t have a star.
(To
be continued)
[Jeff
Mayfield] |
