SCAC Announces All-Conference Volleyball Voting

SCAC Announces All-Conference Volleyball Voting

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – In exclusive all‐conference voting by the head coaches of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), Abbe Holtze of Colorado College was selected SCAC Player‐of‐the‐Year while Southwestern University head coach Don Flora and Trinity University head coach Julie Jenkins were named SCAC Co‐Coaches‐of‐the‐Year. Complete Release

In the same balloting, Jessie Koster of the University of Dallas was selected the SCAC Backrow Player‐of‐the‐Year, and Marguerite Spaethling of Colorado College was named SCAC Freshman‐of‐the‐Year.

A senior outside hitter from Manhatten Beach, Calif., and a three-time All-America selection, Holtz has been the anchor of the Colorado College offense and defense this season. Heading into this weekend’s conference tournament, Holtze is fourth in the SCAC in kills (364), second in kills per set (3.60) and 10th in digs per set (3.56). She has 16 double-doubles (third in the SCAC) and has been a two-time Offensive and one-time Defensive Player-of-the-Week selection during the 2016 season. With 1,632 career kills heading into this weekend’s tournament, Holtze is just 34 kills from becoming Colorado College’s all-time leader in that category.

With this year’s selection and after earning SCAC Player-of-the-Year honors in 2014, Holtze becomes the fifth player in league history to earn multiple POTY awards in a career. Additionally, she is just the third player to have both a Freshman-of-the-Year honor (2013) and a POTY honor (2014 and 2016) on her resume. It is also the third consecutive year that a Colorado College student-athlete has taken home the league’s highest honor as former teammate Courtney Birkett won the award a year ago.

In a tightly contested vote, Holtze received four first-place votes from the coaches in the balloting for Player-of-the-Year while Trinity University’s Kirby Smith received three. Nikki Welch of Southwestern picked up the remaining first-place vote.

Jessie Koster, a senior libero from Sherwood, Ore., was selected the league’s Backrow Player-of-the-Year after leading the SCAC in digs and digs per set for the entirety of the season. Heading into this weekend’s conference tournament, she is averaging 7.45 digs per set (which would set a new SCAC single-season record) and currently stands at 2,831 career digs – the second-most in SCAC history and just 25 away from matching the league standard in that category. She owns four UD program records, and has been ranked atop NCAA Division III for total digs and digs-per-set for most of the season. Early in the season, Koster matched her personal best single-match performance (48), which also ranks fifth all-time in the SCAC.

Koster, who is the first University of Dallas player to earn a SCAC volleyball major individual award, received five votes from the coaches for the Backrow Player-of-the-Year honor. Madi McVay of Austin College, Sarah Mulles of Trinity and Mathis Popelsky of Texas Lutheran University each received one first-place vote.

Marguerit Spaethling, a first-year middle hitter from Larkspur, Calif., currently leads the SCAC and is ninth in the nation in blocks, averaging 1.21 per set. She is third in the conference in total blocks (115), which includes a SCAC season-high 10 in a 3-2 victory over No. 12 Eastern (Pa.) University on Oct. 12. Spaethling is also fifth in hitting percentage (.300) heading into this weekend’s conference tournament.

Spaethling is the fifth consecutive Colorado College player to earn Freshman-of-the-Year honors – joining Emily Phillips (2012), Sarah Barker (2014) and current teammates Abbe Holtze (2013) and Myca Steffey-Bean (2015) as recent Tigers to win the award. Spaethling received six votes from the coaches for the Freshman-of-the-Year award, while Maggi Linker of Trinity received the remaining two first-place vote.

In his first year at Southwestern, head coach Don Flora has guided the Pirates to a 29-3 overall mark, a 12-2 SCAC mark and the second seed heading into this weekend’s conference tournament. Southwestern is currently ranked fifth in the nation by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) and was ranked as high as No. 3 in late September/early October. Flora came to Southwestern from Texas Tech University where in five years he won twice as many games as the Red Raiders had won the previous five seasons. Prior to Texas Tech, he served as the assistant coach at New Mexico State after an illustrious career at the University of La Verne. Flora developed the Leopards into an elite national power as one of only three programs to finish ranked in the top ten in the final AVCA national poll nine straight seasons (2000-08) with five Final Four appearances.  He was named the AVCA and Volleyball Magazine National Coach of the Year after guiding ULV to an NCAA Division III title in 2001.

Trinity head coach Julie Jenkins led her squad to its second regular season title in the last three seasons, as the 16th-ranked Tigers posted a 13-1 conference mark and are currently 25-7 overall. The winningest coach among all active NCAA Division III volleyball coaches, Jenkins stands at 881-398 (.689) over a 33-year career. Her teams have won 30 or matches in 17 seasons and have posted a SCAC regular season winning percentage of .906 (298-31). Trinity has won a record 17 conference volleyball championships, including a streak of 11 consecutive years from 1998-2008. Jenkins was selected the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division III Coach of the Year in 1999, after leading the Tigers to the NCAA Championship match.

The award marks the first for Flora but the eighth time a Southwestern coach has won or shared the honor. For Jenkins, it is the 13th time she has been recognized by her peers as the conference’s Coach-of-the-Year, which ties her with current Trinity head men’s soccer coach Paul McGinlay for the most COTY honors earned in a single sport in league history.

To view the entire 2016 All-SCAC Volleyball Team, click here.

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