VERMILLION, S.D.—It was easy to see that Elizabeth Juhnke was not a typical freshman on the volleyball court this season with the University of South Dakota.

She’d led the Coyotes throughout the year in kills, quickly establishing herself as a distinctive Summit League talent on a team that went 16-0 against the rest of the conference during the regular season.This was as part of a program that went a stunning 31-3 overall for the best win percentage in 28 years of Summit volleyball, and breaking records on the way to a National Invitational Volleyball Tournament championship berth against Georgia Tech. 

It didn’t work out against the Yellow Jackets, who finished second in the ACC and had their own reasons for being disappointed about not getting into the NCAA tournament. It had nevertheless been quite a night for a program that continues to build on a Division I tradition of success under Coach Leanne Williamson.

The championship match set a school attendance record (2,431) for volleyball at the Sanford Coyote Sports Center. Not officially, but just as convincingly, it set a team record for noise.

Afterward, when asked to summarize a memorable season for the players and their coach, Juhnke, again, was not acting like a freshman.

The words were not coming out easily for Juhnke at the postgame interview session, but there was an obvious resolve to make sure people heard them.

“What the seniors have left here are a huge part of why I came here,” she said. “They were very welcoming...Seeing them go is hard, but I’m excited to take their spot and see what I can do.”

Juhnke could not speak to how things had changed since those seniors had begun their time at USD. Sitting beside her, senior Anne Rasmussen, who came within four digs of setting a USD season record this season, was in a better position to cover that territory.

Rasmussen had been part of the team that opened the SCSC. She even got in on the last days of “The Den”, an area tucked into the west side of the DakotaDome where the Coyotes played their matches prior to moving into the new facility. They were still practicing there, in fact, when Rasmussen and the other freshmen began their late-summer practices that first year before the SCSC was ready to go.

“To see this program now, when more than 2,400 come to see a championship match, that’s something you can’t even picture as a little freshman,” she said. “As a senior, I’m just so proud to be a part of it. I’m so happy I got to go on this journey with some amazing teammates.”

Williamson, in her sixth season as head coach after spending her first five years with the Coyotes as a graduate assistant, then assistant coach for Matt Houk, had even more history to draw from in comparison.

“Head coach Matt Houk and I had talked about where we thought the program could go at the time,” Williamson said. “I bought in 100-percent and that’s part of the reason I’m still here. To see that progression, not only with how many wins we have and championships we’ve been a part of, but to see the facility upgrades. We go from playing on the Dome floor and a Sport Court on football turf – we were probably the only team in the country that did that – to playing in a 300-seat den to playing in the SCSC in front of 2,400 people.”

The Coyotes lose four seniors from the roster, led by Elizabeth Loschen, who was third on the team in kills. They also graduate Rasmussen, Pamela Zuluaga and Mehana Fonseca.

It will nevertheless be a strong squad returning with Juhnke and Sami Slaughter, who was second on the team in kills.

“People feel like when you win 31 matches you didn’t face adversity,” Williamson said. “But that’s not true. We’ve been in some really tough situations, we’ve been down in some matches and in game situations. This team continued to fight and continued to get better. That resiliency is something that will definitely stick in my mind. 

“The other thing is that we did something pretty special with a team that was extremely new. We talked about it a lot at the beginning of the year – half of our team was new to the program, whether it was freshmen or transfers. That can be a really tough situation.”

Instead it was a memorable situation. And it stayed that way all season.

“I loved playing volleyball here for the last four years,” Rasmussen said. “It was a dream of mine since I was a kid. I couldn’t ask for better teammates, better coaches or a better environment to play in.”