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MVP: Nnamani's 2,450 career
kills put her first in the record books.
Gonzalesphoto.com |
the final point in the
December 18 championship match was a window on a hard-fought
season.
The 11th-seeded Cardinal, which hadn’t lost in
14 matches, was poised to take home the NCAA title as
senior outside hitter Jen Hucke launched a blistering
serve. Sophomore Kristin Richards stared down the Golden
Gophers of fourth-seeded Minnesota and handily blocked
the return. As the ball came back over the net, all
eyes turned to senior Ogonna Nnamani, as they had all
season. The 6-foot-1 Olympian soared off the floor and
drilled the game-winning kill—from the back row.
“They were not able to stop her offensively,”
coach John Dunning says. “She just kept getting
better and better.”
Led by Nnamani’s younger sister, Njideka, ’07,
the Cardinal women (30-6, 15-3 Pac-10) piled onto Nnamani
after her 29th and final kill of the day, hugging and
crying on the parquet floor of the Long Beach Arena
while the Band played on. It was the sixth championship
for Stanford, and the second under Dunning.
At the start of the season, the coach knew he had a
winning mix—including a returning freshman of
the year (Richards), a high school player of the year
(Bryn Kehoe) and an Olympian who kept breaking her own
records—but he couldn’t predict how well
they’d fare. “The odds were that we were
going to be good, but Ogonna missed the whole fall camp
of 30 practices, and we didn’t have any idea what
lineup we were going to use or whether we could play
together,” he says. “We were a mystery and
it could have gone either way.”
After the Cardinal started the season 10-4, Dunning
asked Nnamani to take the floor during a team dinner.
“She talked about all the times she’d had
to fight through on the national team, trying to make
the Olympic team,” he recalls. “She talked
about how difficult it was to raise her level of play,
and how sometimes she thought she wasn’t good
enough—and how, the next day, she’d go back
and try harder.” Nnamani’s pep talk got
her teammates’ attention. “We beat UCLA
that night and got it on a roll,” Dunning says.
The players’ morale cemented itself later that
month after a come-from-behind victory over undefeated
Washington, 3-2. “We could easily have lost, but
magic made it happen in our favor,” Dunning says.
“And when that starts to happen, you start to
believe.”
As Nnamani got better, Dunning adds, “the rest
of the team kept improving in a way that it could showcase
what she could do.” Playing a tough field of competitors
and traveling to regional NCAAs in Florida and Wisconsin
during final exams tested—and proved—the
team’s mettle. By the time they faced Minnesota
in the championship match, the women were playing their
best volleyball of the season. Hucke contributed nine
kills, Richards produced eight kills and 11 digs, Kehoe
dished out 48 assists, and middle blockers Liz Suiter,
’07, and Franci Girard, ’08, and libero
Courtney Schultz, ’06, “played amazingly
well,” Dunning says. Nnamani was named the tournament’s
most outstanding player after hitting .562 for the match,
and Hucke, Richards and Kehoe joined her on the NCAA
All-Tournament team. Her career total of 2,450 kills
puts her first in the Stanford and Pac-10 record books,
and in January she was voted the nation’s top
female collegiate volleyball player.
As for Dunning, he was so stunned by the win that he
boarded the USC bus outside the arena and almost missed
the Cardinal celebration. “I probably won’t
live that one down.” |
