There have been many changes at Villa Madonna Academy since 1993.
A new athletic complex opened in 2000. The facility’s name changed from Thunderdome to Villhalla, and the teams have been known as the Vipers, Blue Lightning and currently Vikings.
What has remained constant: seeing Sandi Kitchen coach girls volleyball. Fans, parents and players celebrated her 30-plus-year career before Tuesday’s match against Ludlow, a 2-0 home win (25-15, 25-3).
“It doesn’t feel like 30 years,” Kitchen said. “It feels like every year is a new chapter because I don’t teach here. So it’s kind of like a refresher, coming back every season to come here. And it fell into place – one season after another.”
Kitchen didn’t find out about the award until last week.
“Honestly, I’m not a big person of milestones on my behalf; I love to celebrate the kids,” she said.
Senior Maya Kondik has a favorite memory – beating Dixie Heights, 3-2, on Oct. 11, 2023.
“I think it was the first time in a while, and Coach Kitchen, I’d never seen her with so much emotion,” Kondik said. “She was, like, jumping up and down and screaming; she ended up crying, I think. I’ve never seen her that happy before.”
Kitchen remembered the moment – and her leaping, hollering and weeping.
“I think I was, as good as my body can jump up and down,” she said.
Kitchen’s list of accolades at Villa is lengthy – a 482-320 career record, a 60% winning percentage and an 8-0 record this season – the second perfect start in three years. (The Vikings won their first 10 in 2022 on the way to a 22-7 finish.)
That’s just what Kitchen’s done at 2500 Amsterdam Road in Villa Hills.
Not quite 21 miles southeast, at Campbell County High School in Claryville, she’s 213-116 (64.7%) with seven straight 37th District titles in 12 seasons as the Camels’ softball coach.
“Coaching at two schools definitely provides a variety of athletes and people that I get to work with,” Kitchen told LINK nky’s Marc Hardin in a 2023 interview. “Coaching at Campbell County allows me to be at home and give back to the school that I graduated from.”
Kitchen, a 1979 Campbell County and 1984 Northern Kentucky University graduate, has always been a multiple-sport athlete. She played volleyball, basketball and slow-pitch softball at Campbell County and NKU, and she was a graduate assistant on NKU’s first fast-pitch team in 1985.
Former NKU coach and Athletic Director Jane Meier coached Kitchen in volleyball and softball.
“Jane was so particular about breaking down each skill,” Kitchen told Hardin.
“I’m not surprised by the fact that she’s been coaching 30 years,” Meier said Wednesday.
So it made sense Kitchen the coach would be on the court and field after college. She was McNicholas’ volleyball coach from 1984-93, and from 1984-88 she was Newport Central Catholic’s girls basketball coach.
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Kitchen wasn’t sure she would coach again after she left McNicholas – she and husband Bob (who coached cross country at Madeira) had their first of two daughters. If she did, it would only be in Northern Kentucky.
Then, Kitchen heard Villa Madonna had won the state championship in 1980.
“Then I saw in the newspaper that Villa was looking for a volleyball coach,” she said. “… and I thought, ‘What’s the chance of me getting the job at Villa’?”
It turned out chances were good – she was the only one who called about the job.
Slow-pitch softball was a KHSAA-sponsored sport from 1983-2007. Kitchen said nobody was interested in coaching fast-pitch – which surprised her when she took over from Walter Lambert in 2012.
“This area of Campbell County was such a softball-oriented area,” Kitchen said.
‘Intimidated’
Baseball was one of Kitchen’s favorite childhood memories; she played pickup games in the front yard and at the nearby Alexandria Fairgrounds. She took up volleyball as an eighth-grader at St. Mary School in Alexandria.
High school volleyball has massively changed: games are best-of-five sets to 25 points instead of best-of-three to 15, points are scored on both offense and defense instead of only on a team’s serve; blocking a short serve before a teammate has touched the ball is prohibited; and the game being played year-round on club teams.
Kitchen said volleyball is now more user-friendly, exciting and faster-paced; she said older folks sometimes don’t recognize it.
“More than any other sport, it has changed so much,” Kitchen said. “In fact, I think that’s why a lot of people who played earlier in their lifetime, they are intimidated by it now because the rules changed so much. You can kick the ball now. It’s foreign to a lot of people who played 10 years ago, 15 years ago.”
Kitchen teaches physical education part-time at two Catholic elementary schools in Campbell County – St. Peter and Paul in California and St. Phillip in Melbourne. She has no idea when she’ll retire.
“I love these kids here; they buy what you’re selling,” Kitchen said. “I think (when) they don’t buy what I’m selling anymore, that’s the time I can leave.”
More photos below from Tuesday night, taken by Charles Bolton:
