The championship tradition of the Stockton University women’s volleyball team continued Thursday as the Ospreys finished a short but perfect season by winning the program’s 14th New Jersey Athletic Conference title.
Top-seeded Stockton beat visiting Montclair State University 3-0 in the NJAC Tournament championship match in Galloway Township. The set scores were 25-12, 25-18 and 25-13.
The Ospreys finished 7-0 and lost only one set all season. Montclair, the second seed, ended 5-2, its only two losses coming against Stockton.
The NJAC championship was the team’s second in a row, the previous coming in 2019. Last year’s season ended early due to the COVID-19 pandemic, after Stockton started 7-0.
There will be no NCAA Division III Tournament this year, so the season is over.
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Allison Walker has coached Stockton for 15 seasons, and her teams have won 11 NJAC titles.
“I give all the credit to our eight seniors,” Walker said. “They came in really excited. They were happy to play. They wanted it, they earned it, they deserved it. They’ve been together since their freshman year.
“The season’s over, and that’s unfortunate, because I think this team would have made a deep run into the NCAAs.”
Senior setter Emily Sullivan, whom Walker singled out for her leadership, had 35 assists, four kills and 10 digs. Haley Green, a junior, contributed a match-high 14 kills, and senior Christie Louer added 10 kills, 10 digs and two aces. Julie Kohlhoff had eight kills and two blocks, and fellow senior Charlotte Leon also had eight kills. The other seniors were Sophie Marziello (eight digs, one kill), twins Grace Brandt (12 digs, two assists and two aces) and Alice Brandt (seven digs) and Franceska Gustave (two kills, two blocks).
“This team is special,” Walker said. “They were facing the struggle of COVID, and they were able to rise above it. They had to stay healthy and stay safe and get to the championship and win it. We had so many seniors, and they all played tonight. This is one of my special seasons. The NJAC championship was all they could win, and they were laser-focused on it.”
The Ospreys led 12-9 in the first set and then went on an eight-point run. The second set was tied at 14-14, but Louer came up with three kills and Green had one, and Grace Brandt had an ace to lead Stockton to a 25-18 win.
Several players led the Ospreys in the final set. Sullivan finished off the match by serving the last two points, which included an ace. She ended her career fourth in Stockton history with 3,073 assists and tied for fifth in aces (215). Gustave is 10th in career blocks with 283.
“Our goal was the NJAC title, and we all pushed ourselves and played our hearts out,” said Sullivan, a 21-year-old resident of Bridgewater, Somerset County. “We all worked as a unit, pushing each other to the finish and having each other’s back. Playing with a mask on was hard, but we got used to it and stuck it out.”
Louer said the team went into the match fully confident.
“Coach Alli is a great coach,” said Louer, a 21-year-old resident of Clifton in Passaic County. “We definitely wanted to give it our all and leave it all on the court. We had a lot of people watching on livestream. We proved that Stockton volleyball is what it is.”
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