Showing Their Values

The 17 strong needed to narrow 16 values down to a final four. Basketball isn’t the only college sport with a sweet-16 bracket.

Before the NCAA Division III playoffs in April, the Cal Lutheran men’s volleyball team, whose 17 members called themselves the “17 strong” — because every single player is important — met in a Best Western Plus Hotel conference room in Iowa with their coaches at a whiteboard to narrow down their collective 16 core values.

After heartfelt discussion, they voted on the four they valued most. The winners were adaptability, sacrifice, passion and hard work.   

The exercise worked, because on April 28 at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, the team won its first NCAA Division III national championship, sweeping Vassar College in three sets, 25-22, 25-23, 25-23.

Two days earlier, in the semifinals, the Kingsmen had come back from two games behind to beat the 2023 Division III champions, Stevens Institute of Technology, in five sets.

The 17 strong are Parker Brown, Jordan Cooper, Connor Crawford, Borys Horiuk, Grant Hughes, Ryker Linn, Logan Marks, Taylor Marks, Landen Meonske, Trent Rigney, Noah Rigo, Vince Semon, Michael Stahl, Braden Swenningsen, Jake Tucker, Ben Weber and Matthew Wilcox. They are led by head coach Kevin Judd and assistant coaches Chuck English and Ron Higa.

Kingsmen Volleyball is a relatively new program at Cal Lutheran. Judd, an assistant coach for the university’s women’s volleyball team since 2006, formed Cal Lutheran’s first NCAA men’s volleyball team in 2015.

Back then, Judd said, “We were on no one’s radar, and no high school senior was thinking about us.” He first recruited members of other sports teams at Cal Lutheran, then traveled to junior colleges seeking talented players who wanted to transfer. In the team’s first season, despite the skills of individual players, “we lacked that ability to close out a match,” Judd said. “We had to build up our teamwork and chemistry.”

The Kingsmen then “started to beat powerhouses back East, and that put us on the map,” Judd said. In 2019, the Kingsmen were ranked No. 12 nationally in the American Volleyball Coaches Association preseason poll. 

Cal Lutheran is an independent school (meaning it doesn’t belong to a sports conference) in a state with only two Division III men’s volleyball teams (UC Santa Cruz is the other) out of 128 across the nation. So, the Kingsmen volleyball players travel farther than players in other sports to compete, which can be rough on the student-athletes physically, mentally and academically.

This year, when the team added two transfer students, Jordan Cooper ’24 from Long Island University and Michael Stahl from Moorpark College to an already strong roster, the coaches and team knew they might have a chance at a national championship. 

The team’s independent status and lack of geographically close opponents, however, were obstacles to qualifying for the championship. The NCAA, Judd said, requires teams to play at least 70% of their qualifying games in their region. But for Cal Lutheran, the closest regional competitor west of the Mississippi other than Santa Cruz is Loras College. 

So to qualify for the 2024 post-season with a competitive strength of schedule, Judd scrambled to find teams willing to play Cal Lutheran, and the team endured a grueling schedule. A typical week might involve travel on Wednesday, volleyball matches from Thursday through Saturday, then travel home on Sunday.

In a normal year, the team travels three times; this year they made five trips, plus two more to Iowa for the NCAA playoffs.

During the championship game, “all three sets were within 2 points; they played with so much heart and determination,” Judd said. “Vassar played us as tough as they could. It could have been a five-set thriller even though it ended up 3-0; everything was so close because of the way volleyball is scored.”

Cooper and Stahl, in particular, “had phenomenal years,” Judd said. Cooper led the team with 394 kills this season, and Stahl, who had 371 kills, was named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Tournament.

Neither Cooper nor Stahl takes credit for the Kinsgmen’s championship year, however. True to the “17 strong” ethos, they said it’s all about teamwork. 

“I’m not one for individual awards,” Stahl said. “I don’t play well without teammates, and they don’t get enough credit.”

Many of the team members will be back for the 2024-25 season, including Stahl and Cooper. 

Stahl, a business administration major from Northridge, California, recalled the “core values” bracket meeting. “We’d had such a tough schedule, and our bodies were tired, but everyone talked about something they brought to the team,” he said. “We also had a really good brotherhood. We trusted each other.”

Cooper, from Roseville, California, graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology and will return for another year to work on a master’s in sports management. 

“We had a lot of skill as an older team, and Judd is one of the most positive role models I’ve had as a coach,” Cooper said. “Even in big moments he’s a very calming presence, and there’s not a lot of pressure from him.”

Ben Weber ’24 of Rancho Santa Margarita, California, a math major who is returning to Cal Lutheran to earn a master’s in information technology, recalled with a laugh the team’s final celebration at a pizza restaurant near their hotel, which they had to cut short due to a flight at 5 a.m. the next day.

Even in celebration, the 17 strong showed their values: adaptability and sacrifice (when it came to their sleep schedule), and working hard to develop passion for traveling early one last time together. 

Photos courtesy of Emily Adlfinger