EDINBURG, Texas (ValleyCentral) — The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s 2025 volleyball season was filled with record-setting moments and unforgettable performances on the court.

The Vaqueros’ 22-8 regular season and 15-1 Southland Conference record secured a tie of the regular season title, topped with three individuals earning all-conference awards.

Looking back at this season, Head Coach Todd Lowery said, “Nine new faces in the program and just how quickly they came together and how quickly they cared for each other was really fun to be a part of. Of course, all the success on top of that, I think it was really the environment they had and that we had this past season was what was special about this group.”

October 2 marked the turning point of the season. Following a loss to Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, UTRGV went on to win a program-record 16 straight matches. To put the team’s dominance into perspective, only two times UTRGV was pushed to five sets.

“We had the mindset that we were going toward the same direction, and that just made everything easier,” Junior setter Isabella Costantini said. “I feel like after our preseason tournaments, we kind of made that click, that instant switch, of building that chemistry and connection and that made us play the way we did this past season.”

Freshman outside hitter Dimitra Nanou added, “We realized that did not want to be in last place in the conference. We can give some more. We have super talented players on our team, and I was so excited to work more and more every day.”

In the midst of the win-streak, Lowery also reached a milestone: win number 600.

On Nov. 6, UTRGV defeated the University of Incarnate Word, three sets to one, at UTRGV Fieldhouse to clinch to historic win in Lowery’s career.

“Anytime you get to reach a milestone, it’s awesome,” Lowery said. “To reach it with a special group kind of made it more special for me just because even that night, they got the win and everything, but the girls on the team made that night about me, and it should never be about me.”

While Lowery did not want the spotlight on him following the win, his team made sure to give him his flowers.

Sophomore outside hitter Martina Franco said, “Coach literally changed my life when he recruited me to come here, so I’m so happy that he accomplished that with me and the team, you know, just be a part of one of his memories, this important season and his big accomplishment.”

Lowery was also named the Katrinka Jo Crawford SLC Coach of the Year in 2025.

As for outstanding performances, Costantini, Franco and Nanou all shined on the floor, earning Southland Conference awards.

Costantini was named Southland Conference Setter of the Year for the second consecutive time.

She said, “I feel like after my sophomore season where I was recognized as the setter of the year, it was good to get that back, you know, that feeling of all my hard work paid off.”

Franco was named Newcomer of the year.

Franco said, “I was not expecting that at all, but I think when I watch it, I was happy to have something to remember because it was a good season for me and I had a lot of fun and I loved it, so I don’t know. It was a blast to enjoy the season that I have.”

As for Nanou, she was named Southland Conference Freshman of the Year.

“I’m more excited about what we got out of the tournament instead of my award,” Nanou said. “I’m really grateful that I can help my team and receive that award because it’s like a gift from God.”

Despite the historic season for the volleyball program, the team’s final loss to the Ladyjacks in the Southland Conference Tournament Championship Game left a bad taste in the program’s mouth.

The loss fueled them to exceed their performance on the court this season heading into 2026.

Lowery said, “That loss in the conference championship game will drive this team forward. I think just the sentiment. At first, they were sad and then by a week or two later and at this point, they’re angry.”

“The last game we played with the final of the tournament motivates us to push more,” Nanou said. “We can give more. We saw that we can give more, and personally I think everyone is going to put more work in this year.”

By Randy Lefko randy@claytodayonline.com

OAKLEAF – Oakleaf High had one of the largest early signing classes last week with nine signees and it was volleyball that stole the show with five athletes putting signatures to paper for one of the largest signing classes for the sport.

“This is largest graduation class for volleyball athletes that are signing for college scholarships for Oakleaf,” said Oakleaf coach Jamie Reed. “Softball has been a big part of the signing athletes in the past here at Oakleaf and the sports has grown to also be one of the all year sports at the school. I try to give them the tools to get here.”
For Reed, who finished at 12-13 for the 2025 season with a hard fought (3-2) district semifinal loss to Tocoi Creek ending the season. “They did all the hard work.”
Joining Reed’s troops on the stage for the early signing day were football standouts Trace Burney and Jordin Price, softball’s Aubrie Jordan and track state medalist Rayna Lawson. Also signed but not present was soccer standout Cole Perez.
Reed’s five signees were April Townsend and Jiyanna Rivera; both to NCAA Div. II Middle Georgia State University; Morgan Ansley, NCAA Div. II Fort Valley State University (25-5 last year); Kelsey Joshua, NCAA Div. II Benedict College (SC) (18-10) and Gabrielle Humbles, NCAA Div. II St. Francis Marion University (SC) (21-10 last year).
“We have all six seniors; one more, that is working on a signing for February,” said Reed, who gave credit to her recruiting coordinator at JJVA (Jacksonville Junior Volleyball Association). “This is my biggest class in 10 years of coaching; five as head coach.”
Reed noted that Joshua got herself signed with little help.
“She did all the work to self recruit,” said Reed. “Kelsey would ask about emails, how to talk to coaches and got herself completely signed on her own.”
Stats wise, Humbles was top scorer with 222 kills and a team leading 49 service aces with Ansley second with 165. Rivera was top record setting assist player with 523 assists for the year and 1570 for her career. Joshua was top dig defender with 215 leading the team.
For football, with the Knights getting to the region quarterfinals and finished at 8-3, Burney was a game breaking wide receiver with 40 catches and six touchdowns and heading to James Madison University while Price was a lock down defensive back; 32 tackles, two interceptions and 10 pass defenses and wide receiver on offense with 18 catches with four touchdowns heading to University of Alabama-Birmingham.
For Burney, who spent his first three years at Fleming Island, the transition to the Oakleaf game was not a far stretch as he opened his senior season with six catches and two scores in game two win over Fleming Island, then eight catches in game three win over eventual three time Rural state champion Hawthorne.
James Madison (12-1) just won the Sun Belt title with a win over Troy, 31-14, to earn a spot in the spot in the College Football Playoffs. James Madison, ranked 12th is reported to be playing No. 5 Oregon on December 19.
Price was a mainstay on both sides of the ball with equal success as a wide receiver and as a defensive back with Price always matching up with opposing team’s best pass catcher.
On the UAB football website, Price’s description is as a three-star defensive back by 247Sports, 121 tackles in four seasons at Oakleaf, six interceptions with a picksix, with 1243 receiving yards and 15 pass touchdowns. UAB finished at 4-8 this year.
Lawson, a track ace for her entire four year career, exploded in her senior season with a third place thrilling finish in a near dead tie with an 11.96 split that had to go to the hundredths of a second to determine second and third. The gold medal was won in 11.75 in one of the closest finishes at the Clas 4A track and field championships.
In the 200 final, Lawson finished ninth at 24.59.
Lawson signed to continue her track at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. UNLV had nine NCAA region qualifiers and one NCAA championship athlete in the field events.
“UNLV has been with me for a long time,” said Lawson. “Head coach Carmelita Jennings, the Olympic champion (2012 London Games USA Gold 4 x 100 relay, silver in 100, bronze in
200) kept in touch through her senior season. They might put me in the 400, too.”
Oakleaf’s lone softball athlete, Jordan, headed to Florida State College-Jacksonville, had a handful of championship rings with her from club ball action in her career.
Perez, a lead scorer for the Knights soccer team, is headed to University of Akron. Akron lost in the NCAA tournament last year with a 3-2 game against Saint Louis The Zips are currently 13-5-1.

Jessica Olang and her sister, Lindsay, fondly remember growing up with the Emmaus girls volleyball program when their mother, Susan Arndt, was the Green Hornets head coach for nine seasons from 1991-99.

“Back then, we were at Eyer Middle School a lot of the time, and I remember my mom yelling at me to get off the court,” Lindsay Olang said. “I would get hit in the head with a lot of volleyballs. But you know what, it was a lot of fun. I wouldn’t exchange my childhood for anything. I love this community and being around this environment. For us to be back here has been amazing … it has come full circle.”

And that circle now includes a league championship.

Thirty years after Arndt’s 1995 Emmaus team won the program’s first and only District 11 championship, Arndt and her two daughters were on the coaching staff that led the Green Hornets to their first and only league championship.

With a thrilling 23-25, 24-26, 25-23, 25-22, 15-13 come-from-behind win over Bethlehem Catholic on Oct. 16 at Liberty, Emmaus became Eastern Pennsylvania Conference champs for the first time.

The team followed it up by reaching the District 11 6A championship match, where it lost to Parkland in four sets, but the Green Hornets rebounded to beat District 2 champ Delaware Valley in the first round of the state tournament.

While the Hornets fell to Spring-Ford in the PIAA quarterfinals, their memorable 21-5 season made Jessica Olang The Morning Call’s girls volleyball coach of the year; an honor she happily shares with her coaching staff, which includes her mother, her sister, and close friends Emily Elek and Kelsey Nilsen.

Olang and the staff, affectionately called the Fab 5 by Elek, took Emmaus to great heights in just their second season together.

Making their league title all the more unexpected was that the team lost two of its best players — Maleya Hinds and Andraya Flowers — to season-ending injuries before the playoffs began.

But Olang and the assistants preached a “next girl up” philosophy, made some lineup adjustments, and kept the team motivated through a 14-2 EPC regular season.

“Going back to our open gyms last winter, we talked about our outcomes coming from the work we’re putting in now,” Jessica Olang, a 2003 Catasauqua High graduate, said. “If you want good outcomes, you’ve got to put the work in now. We don’t want to be three, four, or five months from now wishing we had done more. So we kept instilling in them that the process is important. Every touch on the ball matters; everything we do in the gym matters. The outcomes will come from what we do in the gym, and we never talked about becoming league or district champs. We just talked about what we need to do in the gym today to get ourselves prepared to be the best we can be, and the results will come. In that insane moment when we became a league champ, and to see the culmination of everything we’ve worked for over two years was just amazing. There may never be another moment like that again.”

Olang said even before the championship match against an undefeated Bethlehem Catholic team, the focus wasn’t on becoming a champion.

“It wasn’t on my radar,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking ‘tonight, we’re bringing home the first EPC championship in school history.’ We emphasized to the girls that they get to go play volleyball today. That’s a great day. Go out and work hard and have fun, and stay together. Bring everything you can and let the chips fall where they may.”

The chips weren’t falling Emmaus’ way early as the Green Hornets got behind two sets to none.

“The third set was really close, and there were like 19 ties, and you got the sense it could go either way,” Olang said. “It was at the end of the third set that Claudia Walls and Rosie Landino had incredible three-stuffed blocks in a row, and that shifted the tide. That’s what’s so fun, it’s a momentum sport. You get a couple of great plays like that, and everything can shift.”

Olang was a talented player in her own high school days.

At Catasauqua, where her mother began the program, she was a four-year varsity setter and a three-year captain. She was named first-team all-District 11 three times and was a two-time all-state honorable mention selection.

She then went on to play for Roberts Wesleyan College near Rochester, New York, where she was a four-year starting setter and an all-conference player. After college, she coached at Dieruff, where she eventually became head coach before marrying and moving to upstate New York, where she and her husband began a family and a business.

But she came back to the Lehigh Valley and settled in Emmaus, where she has four children, ranging in ages from 13 to 6.

“Even when we lived in upstate New York, I was still coaching volleyball with my mom, assisting at Velocity, and Crosscourt, just trying to keep my toes in the water as much as I could,” Olang said. “But when you’re raising a family, you have to step back from leading. When we came back to the area, it was just like the right timing for me to get more involved in coaching again. This position opened, and it was the perfect storm of being ready for it. I am so appreciative of this opportunity, and to have the coaching staff I have is unbelievable. You can have a vision, but if people aren’t there to share that vision, it’s very hard to move that vision along.”

Olang said that the staff is remarkably united.

“We’re of one mind, one focus, one vision, one mentality,” she said. “We’re determined to take this program where we want it to go.”

Arndt, who has had success wherever she has been over the last 35 years in volleyball, is proud of her daughter and says, “She makes sure to keep me in line.”

She was a member of Parkland’s football staff for a few years, working directly as an interpreter with player Alex Ocasio, who was deaf.

“Coach [Tim] Moncman runs a well-oiled ship, just as we pride ourselves on being here,” Arndt said. “He made me realize that while there are a lot of moving parts, it all comes together as a whole. There are a lot of coaches on a football staff, but it comes down to where we all fit in, where do the puzzle pieces connect. I won a coach of the year award as a boys coach at Northampton, but I am so much happier for Jess. You never want the spotlight to shine on yourself. That’s how she is. You want to give back to others … the other coaches and the kids. This puts a stamp on who she is and what she has created, and what the kids have created.”

Elek, who graduated from Emmaus in 2009 and played Division I college volleyball at Canisius, said, “Being an Emmaus alum, it was an especially awesome season. The girls were super great. It was also so exciting. The past two years we’ve been here, we’ve done a lot with the girls, and we let them know that it’s OK to make mistakes. You just have to learn from them. As a coaching staff, we all do different things, but it all comes together as a well-oiled machine.”

Emmaus will graduate two first-team all-EPC selections in Amanda Rivera and Alyssa Heffner, but has several outstanding players returning.

“Our seniors were phenomenal this year, but I look ahead to what will still be here and what’s coming up, and we’re as excited as we’ve ever been,” Olang said. “We’ve got Fiona Answini back as an outside hitter and Emma Nesfeder back who ended up playing middle for us this year when she’s actually a setter. We’ve got great seniors coming up. The talent pool remains strong and we’re excited to see what they can accomplish.”

It’s finally starting to sink in for several Texas A&M volleyball players that they have actually won a national title and made history.

For the nine seniors on the team, it was a storybook ending to their college careers, and for many of them, it marked the conclusion of their playing journeys. However, in an interview, coach Jamie Morrison alluded to a few of the girls receiving calls about opportunities to play professionally.

While he didn’t mention specific names, the two most obvious candidates would be standout outside hitter Logan Lednicky and dominant middle blocker Ifenna Cos-Okpalla. We got a notable nugget on social media when a fan posted that Cos-Okpalla has signed with former NBA veteran Jermaine O’Neal’s sports agency, Valor Sports Agency (VSA). The official VSA Instagram account appeared to confirm the news with an announcement on their page, which you can see below:

Cos-Okpalla was a crucial contributor throughout the NCAA Tournament run, whether it was delivering blocks, putting down kills, or firing ace serves. It was only fitting that she recorded the final kill of the NCAA championship match to secure the first-ever NCAA title for the Texas A&M volleyball program.

I hear Jamie Morrison from Texas Volleyball and appreciate his sentiments…

“I care less about mistakes and more about responses”

And this is fine and fair…but we also have to care deeply about mistakes. Quality of action-execution at the adult elite level of sport matters.

I’m being purposefully facetious- I know he knows this and I know he cares about this. I highlight it because I want to suggest a way to show you want to minimise mistakes in your team.

Attention…

It starts with focus of attention.

Attention is arguably the most important mental skill in high performance sport. Actions are heavily mediated by it…in fact they’re constantly mediated by its duration, direction, and strength. Technical actions, tactical actions (decisions), and physical actions constantly mediated by attention.

Coaches should be greedy with relation to attention. They should place high demands on players taking control of their attention, executing with attention, guiding it appropriately and robustly. By doing so players lessen a propensity to make mistakes.

My thesis here is obvious – many (but not all) mistakes are as a result of low attention – a disconnection from the game. High performance sport requires a high attention – focused and connected to the game no matter what.

So…

Whilst it’s understandable to give players leeway for error (especially as such an approach promotes freedom and creativity)…coaches would do well to drive player attention – it’s control…it’s duration and direction.

…more