National champion Kentucky volleyball (Vicky Graff)
Kentucky coach Craig Skinner took his time kissing the national championship trophy Sunday during his team’s welcome home celebration in Memorial Coliseum. Why not? It has taken the UK coach from 2005 until now to get UK its first national title — the first volleyball national championship for the SEC. Kentucky is also only the 11th school to win a national volleyball crown.
“I might be speechless for a little bit,” Skinner said when he tried to address the crowd of UK fans, including some who had also been at Saturday night’s watch party in Memorial Coliseum to watch UK beat Texas in the title match.
“I first dreamed of building a program like the one I left behind (as a Nebraska assistant when he got the UK job) and winning a national championship,” Skinner said. “I wanted players to play in a way so people would run out of the stands and want to join us.”
That might happen now because UK’s championship run exposed a lot of UK fans to volleyball and just how athletic and skilled most of the players are.
Skinner explained to the crowd how hard his team had worked since Aug. 4th in his unusual solid COVID season.
“There’s no way winning a national championship is harder than what we just went through,” he said.
He praised not only his players but his staff for making it “simple” to coach the team this season.
“I will never forget the chance and risk (UK athletics director) Mitch Barnhart took on me to lead this program,” Skinner said.
He said the goal was to win the “Big Daddy” trophy and UK did that in Omaha in a two-week bubble where it won five matches and only dropped two sets.
“We were in Omaha and we could feel you, the Big Blue Nation, 763 miles away,” Skinner said.
Senior libero Gabby Curry talked about UK’s “legendary” year and also praised the staff for the “caring” approach it took this season to make sure players were okay athletically, academically, and mentally.
“What a better way to celebrate our mutual respect and admiration than a freakin’ national championship,” Curry said. “I cannot put into words how many extra hours we put in.
“I am just in awe of the way we fought together. We can say we were part of the first national championship (for UK volleyball) as well as the 11th program ever in history to win a national championship in volleyball. We did that.”
