By Noah Allison

In the last game of the season played Friday in the KFC Yum! Center the Cardinals were able to dispose of the Bearcats in three games, winning 25-12, 25-15 and 25-22.

It was senior night for U of L’s volleyball team. Caitlin Welch,  Emily Juhl, Carly Sahagian, Randi Ewing and Brooke Mattingly were honored before the match with Cincinnati.

“All five of them have made such an impact on the team, not just with their play but with their personalities and attitude. I always say that your team is a reflection of your seniors and you senior leadership. Our team plays very hard, they are scrappy and they are a tight knit group. Chemistry wise they have a good bond and I think that has a lot to do with our seniors and the people that they are,” head coach Anne Kordes said.

The Cardinals were led by Juhl who had 13 kills on the night and red-shirt freshman Janelle Jenkins who was second on the night with ten kills.

Welch and freshman hitter Maya McClendon had 16 digs on the match. Mattingly and Ewing each had seven kills. The win puts the Cards at an overall record of 21-7, with a perfect 16-0 conference record and a perfect 9-0 home record.

The Cards were awarded with their American Athletic Conference Championship trophy afterwards. The Cards sealed up a spot in the NCAA Tournament and with two games left in the regular season are looking to finish strong and prep to make an impactful run in the tournament.

“We want to beat these last two teams in three, we don’t want to mess around. Beating a team in three means you’re taking care of business and that gives you confidence. We are coming on and getting in the groove of things and I think it’s important that we keep the momentum going these last games,” sophomore setter Katie George said. “We win out and take these last two weeks of practice before heading into the tournament to really prep ourselves and not so much for our opponents. We have to so some things to get better looking ahead into the tournament to be able to make a run and that’s ultimately what we want to do.”

Although the Cardinals have already won the AAC and have earned a bid into the tournament it is important to win out in order to get as high of a seed in the tournament as they can.

“If we lost we are most likely going to go play a seeded team in the first round and have a really uphill battle instead of having a first round match we can compete with,” Kordes said.

The Cards have been able to turn the season around after a rough 2-6 start and improve on many of their weaknesses that plagued them earlier. Errors were the thing that killed the team the most in the early rough stretch, but the Cards are now in the positive, having committed 482 to their opponents 554. But with only a little bit of time left to prepare there are still areas of the Cardinals game that need improvement.

“We have got to get better at passing,” Kordes exclaims. “Caitlin Welch passed great but I think that everybody else that touched the ball, from a passing stance, needs to be better. And we need to block more effectively, we were in the right spot and we were in front of whom we needed to be, we just have to be more aggressive with it. We are going to do a ton of passing here on out because that will be our saving grace come tournament. It will either help us get through or it will kill us.”

Regardless of the season at hand and plans for Louisville Volleyball’s future, the night was still about the recognition of what the five seniors were able to do for the U of L volleyball program.

One senior, libero Caitlin Welch, has forever notched her name in the legacy of Louisville’s great student athletes. With each of her 479 digs this season she added to her school record for digs, and her 2,083 career digs rank in the top 15 in NCAA history.

The senior class was here when Coach Kordes started her tenure here at U of L and they are all an integral part of her early success as U of L’s coach.

“I’m very sad to see them go, I’m just going to miss them. They started off with a tough year and stayed resilient and worked very hard and now to be able to win a championship and play in front of thousands of people in our home gym, stuff like that is just special,” Kordes said.

“I’m just so proud of them and I am going to miss them very much.”