Kee volleyball team battles through 2022 season with large group of upperclassmen

The Kee volleyball team played its way through a 2022 campaign that resulted in a 1-23 season match record. That overall result played out to a 0-8 mark in Upper Iowa Conference (UIC) play that placed the Lady Hawks in ninth place in the final Upper Iowa Conference team standings.

The Kee netters’ lone victory of the season did come against an Upper Iowa Conference opponent, as the Lady Hawks defeated Postville in two sets at the Waukon Tournament in the middle of September. The regular season dual match between the two teams that counted in the Upper Iowa Conference standings did not fall that same way, as Kee battled the host Lady Pirates to a split of the first two sets of the match but then had the next two fall in Postville’s favor, including a fourth-set war that ended the match with a 24-26 Kee loss.

This season’s squad was led by a large group of eight seniors, all of whom made their own significant contributions to this fall’s club. Brooklyn Bakewell, Phoenix Crass, Alyssa Darling, Monica Davis, Rhianna Jones, Jersey Mathison, Neva Peterson and Jayden Rankin each played the final volleyball matches of their high school careers with completion of this season.

A new addition to the Kee program this fall in her senior season after transferring from Postville, Rankin paced the Hawks in nearly every facet on the court, including team-high totals of 37 kills, 11 solo blocks, a near-perfect serving percentage of 98.7% that included just one missed serve in 75 tries, and sharing the squad’s ace serve lead with junior Kaylee Hawes at 10 service winners each. Crass ended up not missing a serve this season in her 11 tries at that line.

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