FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (September 19, 2022) – From the day the Northern Arizona volleyball team first stepped into the gym for preseason in 2015, everyone sensed something was different. Three months later, everyone's thoughts were confirmed when they punched the program's first ticket to the NCAA Tournament since 1999.
"Even before the season started, the atmosphere was different," said Janae McDonnell, the team's leader and the program's first AVCA All-American in 2015. "We knew what we needed to do and we were there everyday ready to perform. Then we got our freshmen in and they were rockstars. We had our first double-day and even though it was our first time competing, we were going after it. From the start, the competitiveness on both sides of the net was high."
Seven years after that special group of Lumberjacks hoisted the Big Sky Championship during a record-setting year, the 2015 Volleyball team will be inducted into the NAU Athletics Hall of Fame this weekend, joining their NCAA Tournament predecessors – the 1999 team – in enshrinement.
The path to becoming champions actually began with heartbreak the year prior. In the 2014 Big Sky semifinals, the Lumberjacks held a 2-1 lead over the No. 1 seed, Idaho State, on the Bengals' home court. However, a late call in the fourth set that would have given NAU match point went against the Lumberjacks. The Bengals claimed the set a point later and eventually won the fifth set, effectively ending the Lumberjacks' season in sudden fashion.
"I think it gave us some confidence and some fearlessness," said head coach
Ken Murphy. "For the first time, we knew we could do it and some things didn't go our way in that match. Obviously it was really close, but it left a real bitter taste in our mouth. At the same time, it also let us know that we were good enough and on the right track."
Even for Jordan Anderson – one of four true freshmen on the 2015 team – she could see the fire that the returners had from her first day on campus.
"They felt like the (2014) title was taken from them and they weren't letting that happen again," Anderson said. "Like anything in life, hardship leads to something beautiful and that's the mentality that we had as a team. It was intense from day one walking into the gym and being part of a culture that was hungry because they had something they wanted to prove. You could tell on the day we won (the championship), how unbelievably satisfied our seniors seemed that all the hard work we put in was worth it."
After NAU opened the season with a 2-1 mark at the JMU Classic in Harrisonburg, Va., the 'Jacks hosted their Lumberjack Classic during the second weekend of the season. NAU started its home tournament with straight-set sweeps over Houston Baptist and Liberty before facing off with Loyola Marymount in the defacto tournament championship match.
The Lions, who had swept No. 20 UCLA on the road the week prior, came into the Rolle Activity Center receiving votes in the AVCA National Coaches Poll and immediately claimed the early advantage in the first set. Loyola Marymount was poised to take the second set as well, leading 21-13 late, but NAU rallied back to not only win that set, but the third as well.
Even after Loyola Marymount forced a deciding fifth game, NAU prevailed to win its home tournament, improve to 5-1 in the process and ultimately claim a victory over a Loyola Marymount squad that advanced to the Sweet 16 later that fall.
"That was a pretty big breakthrough," Murphy said. "They won a couple of matches pretty handedly that weekend and then played a great match against Loyola Marymount. It was another step forward. You can look at a whole series of matches going back to the year before where we gained a little more confidence and belief that we were on the right track."
The 'Jacks eventually took a 10-3 record into conference play – picking up impressive victories over Virginia Tech and Boise State in the process – with their only two losses in the third and fourth weeks coming on the road to No. 10 Arizona State and Indiana.
Riding a high, NAU went into Portland State and won its conference opener before the Lumberjacks' lone setback in its entire Big Sky slate. Taking on Sacramento State in The Nest, NAU suffered a four-set loss to the Hornets to cap a 1-1 Big Sky opening road trip.
For any other team, a split of a road trip to open conference play would be accepted. But for this group of Lumberjacks, the loss was a turning point of significance.
"At that point, we knew what we were capable of and we knew that we had a match that we didn't put forth our best effort," Murphy said. "There was a lot of frustration and a lot of regret about how we approached that and losses often propel special teams. You hate to say it, but sometimes you need that. I remember the locker room being very frustrated and getting back to Flagstaff, we heard a lot of feedback that they were determined to never approach a match like that again. That team looked back on that match and put their foot down that it wouldn't happen again, and it didn't."
The loss in Sacramento would be NAU's last until the NCAA Tournament as the Lumberjacks started to steamroll the Big Sky Conference. NAU won its next 14 matches, six coming in sweeps and just one going the distance, as the Lumberjacks picked off one opponent at a time.
NAU's only five-set match in conference play came at home versus Northern Colorado, the defending Big Sky Champions, with the Lumberjacks notching their school-record eighth straight conference win. Three weeks later, NAU avenged its lone conference loss at home versus Sacramento State – a victory that was not only the program's school record 13th straight win, but a win that also locked up the Big Sky Conference regular season title.
"The common theme we had in that stretch was figuring how to hold ourselves back a little bit," Murphy said. "All you can do on any given day is to win the match that you have in front of you. You have to patient with the process and you could tell that we had so much confidence and enthusiasm. The biggest danger was probably getting ahead of ourselves like we had already won the championship, and you could feel their excitement every night that it was going to burst out of them just to be playing."
Having clinched the program's first outright conference regular season title, NAU earned the right to host the 2015 Big Sky Championship in the Rolle Activity Center, where the Lumberjacks were 11-0 following their 14th win in a row in the regular season finale against Portland State.
After sweeping Southern Utah in the first round of the conference tournament, NAU once again faced off with Sacramento State for a spot in the championship match. And for the second time in eight days, the Lumberjacks dispatched the Hornets.
That set up a colossal showdown between NAU and Idaho State, two teams that had a combined 50 wins between them, and coincidentally, the same Idaho State team that squashed NAU's dreams just 12 months prior in Pocatello. But in front of a school record 1,423 fans – still the largest home crowd ever in the Rolle Activity Center – NAU would not be denied as the Lumberjacks recorded their third sweep in as many days to win the Big Sky Championship.
"Those three days are still some of the best days of my life," McDonnell said. "It was so cool to see how much our team was clicking at the right moment and how much we were loving it. There was pure joy on and off the court, it's something I wish I could relive. To have Rolle sold out and have people standing on the staircases for that championship match, it's a day I'll never forget. Winning that final point, I still get chills about it."
The league's auto-bid to the Big Dance sent the Lumberjacks to Los Angeles for the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and although NAU's record winning streak came to an end at 17 matches with a loss to San Diego, the 2015 team's legacy was cemented.
In addition to the 17-match winning streak, NAU set a school record for most wins finishing with a 28-5 record. The 28 victories were tied for 10th-most in the country that season. The Lumberjacks also set a school record for most home wins in a single season (14) while completing an unblemished mark in Rolle. One year after setting a school record for hitting percentage, NAU took it up a notch and reset the record to .264.
As a team, NAU ranked in the top 30 nationally in service aces (fourth), aces per set (seventh), blocks (11th), blocks per set (20th), opponent hitting percentage (23rd) and hitting percentage (26th).
Maybe most impressively, NAU concluded the 2015 season ranked No. 33 in the NCAA RPI Rankings, by far their highest finish ever. To add the cherry on top, the 'Jacks were the highest-ranked team in the RPI among the four Division I schools in the state including Arizona and Arizona State.
When looking at NAU's all-time record book, several members of the 2015 Hall of Fame team are among the program's greats, not coincidentally. McDonnell, formerly Janae Vander Ploeg, is the Lumberjacks' all-time leader in kills while also setting the single-season kills record (563) that season. Payton Bock, another senior on that team, is NAU's all-time leader in blocks.
McDonnell and Bock were two of the team's four all-conference players that season with the former winning both the Big Sky Regular Season and Tournament MVP awards. They were joined on the all-conference list by Jensen Barton, who concluded her career second all-time in assists, and Lauren Jacobsen, who is one of six players along with McDonnell in the 1,000 kill/1,000 dig club.
Despite playing just two seasons at NAU, Stacia Williams – the team's libero – is third all-time in digs per set. Brittni Dorsey, a redshirt freshman that season, would set the single-season ace record the following year.
"The most important part to take away is if you have a team where everyone understands their role so perfectly and they work really hard together, you can do whatever you want," Murphy said. "I don't even know if we were the most talented team in the our conference that year honestly. There were a couple of teams like Idaho State and Sacramento State who were really talented, but that team was 100 percent focused on playing together within their roles and that's been something that every team since then has been out to replicate."
The 2015 team also included Anderson, who concluded her career third in program history in digs, and Kaylie Jorgenson, who would earn Big Sky Co-MVP during NAU's 2018 championship year. Anderson, Jorgenson and Dorsey bookended their careers by leading NAU back to the top in 2018, which further solidified the Lumberjacks' status as a perennial title contender in the Big Sky.
"When we won in 2018, there was a sense that we were so proud of what we accomplished, but also that we were putting NAU on the map," Anderson said. "We did it when I was a freshman and we did it again when I was senior and it set the standard that we were a top program and that we're not satisfied with being in the middle. That's not how we roll. Those two championships set a high standard and it gave us a big boost of confidence that NAU is not messing around and we're here to win."
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