This story originally appeared in the Oct. 13 edition of the weekly LINK Reader. To get these stories first, subscribe here.
When it comes to Northern Kentucky high school volleyball, the Conner Cougars typically have not been movers and shakers. They have yet to win a 33rd district tournament championship. They have not won a 9th Region title. But the Cougars have been shaking things up the past few years while making a move on their rivals, and the rest of the state has noticed.
“It feels amazing to finally get some success,” said middle blocker Lilly Hamburg, one of 10 seniors on the team. “We haven’t beaten Ryle in 20 years. Until last year, we hadn’t even been district runner-up since 2005. That’s the year I was born, so that’s how long it’s been.”
Look at them now.
The Cougars are in the midst of an unprecedented three-year rise that has coincided with the maturation of a history-making group of seniors who have risen to the occasion under fourth-year coach Douglas Rabe.
“I just didn’t walk in and wave a magic wand. The credit goes to the girls,” Rabe said. “Once the girls accepted the fact they are only as good as they decide, we started getting better.”
With a current record of 28-8 heading into Tuesday’s 9th Region semifinal game with Notre Dame, the Cougars already had more wins than any other Conner volleyball team since joining the 9th Region in 2003. The Cougars earned the second seed in the 33rd District tournament and were 20th in the Kentucky Volleyball Coaches Association statewide rankings heading into October. They were fourth in the KVCA 9th Region rankings. They ended up a runner-up out of the 33rd district, unable to knock off their nemesis Ryle, but did earn their first region tournament victory with a triumph over Highlands in the first round on Sunday.
This isn’t a one-year outlier. The Cougars have put together their best three-year run this century with a 68-27 record since the beginning of the 2021 season. That eclipses the three-year run from 2003-05 when Conner went 57-34 with three consecutive district runner-up finishes.
The team is loaded with standouts. Hamburg, co-captain with classmate and libero Anna Hamilton, was on the KVCA preseason watch list, along with classmate Peyton Walker, a middle blocker. Hamilton leads the team in digs. She is also Conner’s all-time digs leader. Hamburg leads the team in kills, blocks and service aces. She is Conner’s career leader in kills and blocks and ranks second in aces.
Hamburg is also Conner senior class president. She is a member of the National Honor Society. She’s a freshman mentor. She’s the school spirit and activities director and a student section spirit leader at the non-volleyball games she attends. Hamburg knows the pulse rate of the Conner student body and she can feel excitement building around the volleyball team.
“We’re one of the most successful teams at Conner now,” Hamburg said. “All the girls have worked so hard to make the school proud, because it didn’t used to be that way.”
In between 2005 and 2021, Conner endured 14 losing seasons in 15 years. The Cougars had nine losing seasons in a row from 2006-14 and five straight losing seasons from 2016-2020.
The turnaround in the win column came in 2021, when the Cougars finished 19-6. They finished 21-13 last season. Coach Rabe could see changes in attitudes and the beginning of better play his first year in 2020. Hamburg and her classmates were freshmen that year. Since then, Conner has leapfrogged Cooper in the district pecking order with some big wins over the Jaguars.
“I think a big part of it has been coach Rabe being around all four years,” Hamburg said. “I’ve been with the team since the eighth grade. I know we had a lot of different coaches for a long time before him.”
The coach credits the players. The players credit the coach. It’s exactly the kind of symbiotic relationship the program needed. Hamburg said a mutually beneficial relationship between the players and coaches has been a key to unlocking their potential.
“When coach Rabe got here, he had us all believing in ourselves, and we started winning and believing in him,” Hamburg said. “We have a lot of seniors. One of the strengths of our team is versatility, and coach is using us in a way that makes us better.”
The rest of the seniors are McKenzie Deatherage, Aubree Depenbrock, Payton Gutzwiller, Madison Leiprecht, Carly Nehus, Jordan Potter and Jordan Ransdell. Depenbrock is the assists leader. Nehus is second on the team in kills. Key juniors are Bailey Morris, Mackenzie Sandeen and Rhiannon Sandeen. Sophomore Annika Berwanger and freshman Shylyn Koerber have been effective youngsters.
Most are multi-positional players. Berwanger’s emergence in the middle has allowed Rabe to move Hamburg and Walker to the outside in certain situations.
“Our offense runs through the middle,” coach Rabe said. “But we want to keep other teams guessing by moving people around.”
Hamburg is all for it.
“It gets more girls involved,” she said. “It makes teams adapt to us. That never used to happen at Conner.”