It may have been Senior Night for AU Volleyball Saturday, but the small Bender crowd knew it was really Kucerkova Night.
Senior Karla Kucerkova was honored as the only senior in her final regular-season home game, a 3-0 drudging of Maryland-Eastern Shore, just one night after she secured the career kill record in a 3-0 victory at Navy. It was a fitting end to the season for one of the greatest female athletes in AU history.
"I don't think we've had anybody better than her so far," said AU head coach Barry Goldberg. "We've had very good players at certain things, but here's somebody who, all around, has game."
Kucerkova's parents and younger sister were on hand Saturday as her teammates presented her with mementos of her accomplishments. The two-time Patriot League Player of the Year's resume includes National Academic Volleyball Player of the Year, PL Female-Scholar Athlete of the Year, and most recently, AU's career kill record-holder.
Kucerkova snatched that achievement as she swatted 19 kills in Annapolis, Md. She added 20 more in Saturday's match, giving her 1,684 career kills. Now she can set her sights on the PL kill mark of 1,718, set by Army's Deann Machlan in 1995. With at least two matches remaining, Kucerkova is capable of closing the 34-kill gap.
Her stellar career has been in the making since she joined the program in 2000. Goldberg said that year's team was one of the best he had coached, and loaded with talent. But even as a freshman on a deep team, Kucerkova was promising.
"We had three very strong players that year, then Karla came to be the fourth," Goldberg said. "It looked to be, in all honesty, that Karla was going to be the best one of them."
The program had many successful seasons before Kucerkova, but Goldberg said she was a notch above the best players he's coached.
"I think the biggest difference with her has been she's strong," Goldberg said. "She's athletic. You can see the strength in her hit and her passing, whereas a lot of the other players kind of have a motion, a pretty good motion, but they don't have the muscle that she has."
The action on the court took a backseat to Kucerkova. The Eagles (19-9, 14-0 PL) rounded out their conference season at Navy (11-17, 5-9 PL) with a win by scores of 30-26, 30-23 and 30-11. Saturday they topped Maryland-Eastern Shore (16-10) by tallies of 30-24, 30-21 and 30-23.
Now the team sets its sights on its third consecutive PL championship, which it will host this Saturday and Sunday. Top-seeded AU will face Army in the semifinals. The winner of that match will play the victor of Bucknell and Lehigh in the final for a shot at the NCAA tournament.
Everyone in the field except AU enters the tournament bruised after a rough end to the regular season. Lehigh gave doormat Lafayette its first conference win in years Saturday while Bucknell fell to Colgate and Army to Marist.
