2024 All MIAA Volleyball selections

[Graphic courtesy of Washburn Athletics]

Seaman senior Maegan Mills (23) has been named the TSN Shawnee County volleyball player of the year for the second straight season.

[Photo by Jesse Bruner/Special to TSN]

Hayden senior Jensen Schrickel scored seven touchdowns in the win over Perry-Lecompton.

[Photo by Rex Wolf/TSN]

2024 All MIAA selections from Washburn

[Graphic courtesy of Washburn Athletics[

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Emily Graf Conner Bush

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By RICK PETERSON

TopSports.news

Washburn Rural volleyball coach Kevin Bordewick reached another landmark milestone in last Saturday's Centennial League tournament, using a perfect 5-0 record on the day to raise his career victory total to 1,076 while moving past former Lansing coach Julie Slater (1071 wins) for the No. 2 spot on Kansas' all-time victory list.

KevinBordewick2024VB 6Washburn Rural volleyball coach Kevin Bordewick has moved into the No. 2 spot for all-time volleyball wins in Kansas with 1,076. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]

But there were no celebrations or even a mention of the accomplishment to his Junior Blues, who won their fourth straight Centennial League championship.

 "I think it's really cool,'' Rural senior Kate Hinck said. "I didn't know that at all, but that's really awesome. I feel like he doesn't like to brag about himself, but he's such a great coach and just to get to play for such an amazing program is really good.''

By Saturday night, Bordewick, who is in his 30th season with the Junior Blues. was already thinking about what his team could have done better in the Centennial tournament and about getting Rural ready for its next match.

"Our next big game is our next game and our next big tournament is our next tournament,'' said Bordewick, who is 1,076-275 in his career and 1,029-235 at Rural, including an 18-2 record this fall. "We don't play any (matches) this week but we've got plenty of chances this week to correct a lot of things, even though we won all five matches.

"But we dropped a set to Manhattan I don't think should have happened, I thought there were other sets that were too close that shouldn't have been close and for me with this group I think it's more of a mental toughness thing that I think we're slowly understanding. Their sense of urgency needs to speed up since we're kind of gearing towards the postseason here in a couple of weeks.''

Bordewick has led the Junior Blues to eight Class 6A state championships, with the most recent title coming in 2022, and 25 state tournament appearances, but it's the ones that got away that he said are the hardest to forget.

"I still think in '05 we had a chance to get that one and I think in 2010 we had a chance to get that one and we let it slip in the semis,'' Bordewick said. "Those are the ones that you should have had that stick with you. And that team (in 2021) that was undefeated going into championship Saturday, I felt so good about them and we had a team meeting, we had a little film review and everybody felt good and we liked our chances and then we let it slip.

"It's the ones that get away that will eat at you, eat at me anyway. But when you lose, you have to learn from it and go on. And that's one thing these guys have always been good at. You can pick apart things, we can understand things, we try to isolate things and hopefully it transfers to a game the next time.''

Bordewick got his coaching start in the late 1980s at Randolph-Blue Valley and admits that he knew very little about volleyball at that time.

"When you start you're just thinking, 'I've just got to be prepared so I look like I know what I'm doing at practice,' and I still sometimes feel that way,'' Bordewick said. "But knowing nothing about volleyball at all when you start, it's a continual learning process and even now I'm trying to find new drills, I listen to motivational things and I watch other coaches because you're always trying to learn something about what you can do to be better. And I'm still doing that even at this late stage of my career. But this is a far cry from when I started.''

KevinBordewick2024VB 4Kevin Bordewick talks to his Washburn Rural volleyball team before the start of Wednesday's practice. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]

Bordewick now only trails former Bishop Miege coaching legend Gwen Pike, who has 1224 wins, for the all-time Kansas record, but he said that isn't, or never has been, something that's on his mind. 

"In all honesty, that's never been a goal,'' Bordewick said. "I told my wife (Pat), 'If I'm only going to do this for the sole purpose of getting the all-time then I'm doing it for the wrong reasons and I need to stop.'

"I just love being around these kids and trying to get them to understand how to be better than they ever thought they could be. That's why I like doing this, and I am competitive, and it helps fuel my competitiveness, but (No. 1) is not a goal.''

Having said that, Bordewick, who has also coached the Junior Blues to a pair of 6A titles in basketball and has 299 career victories in that sport, admits that he's still enjoying himself too much to step away from coaching any time soon.

"Like I've told people, I'd really like to stick around for four to six more years -- that's my goal,'' he said. "And one of the reasons I'm sticking around is that we have a really good eighth-grade class and the seventh-grade class and the sixth-grade class they're all really good and they want to play volleyball and a lot of them want to play basketball, too. So I'm going to stick around for a little bit.''

 

 

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