JACKSONVILLE – A terrific 2019 season came to a close on Friday night as the Jacksonville State volleyball team fell to Morehead State in the semifinal round of the Ohio Valley Conference tournament.
 
JSU (20-10) fell 3-0 to the fourth-seeded Morehead State Eagles (23-8), who the Gamecocks narrowly edged for the regular season title. It was a revenge match for the Eagles, who failed to beat Jax State twice during the regular season.
 
Led most of the season by a potent attack, JSU struggled against MSU who shut down several of the Gamecocks' options. MSU hit .256 as a team and totaled 7.5 blocks to hold JSU to a .128 attacking percentage.
 
Senior Sadie Anderson finished with a team-best eight kills, along with sophomore Lena Kindermann. Fellow senior Kaylie Frear, in her 135th match as a Gamecock, registered seven kills and a block. Junior Lexie Libs managed 24 assists.
 
Along with Anderson and Frear, seniors Shayla Schmidt and Maddie Cloutier also saw their final action for the Gamecocks. Schmidt led the team with four blocks, finished her shortened season due to injury with 56 in just 54 sets of action.
 
MSU opened the match with a 4-0 start, and led 11-6 before JSU called timeout to settle in. The Gamecocks climbed back to cut the deficit to one on two separate occasions at 14-13 and 18-17, but were unable to make it all the way back even as the Eagles took a 25-20 set one win. In an eerily similar second set, MSU again grabbed an early 11-6 lead only to see JSU come back within a point several times after. Down 22-17, a kill by Schmidt sparked a 3-0 run that brought JSU back late. The Gamecocks fought off back-to-back set points to make it a 24-23 game, before MSU sealed it with the final point.
 
In the third, Jax State got off to its best start with a 7-4 advantage after kills from Frear and Anderson. The Eagles used a 3-0 run later to take the lead at 11-10. Schmidt and Kindermann combined on a block to even things back at 11-11, before MSU would grab the lead for good on a missed serve. Despite JSU's best efforts, the Eagles continued to hold off the Gamecocks with a narrow one-to-two point advantage until increasing its margin late to 25-20.
 
Like many other things, 2019 became the first season that JSU had double the wins than losses since the historic 2009 campaign. The 10-year stretch also marked the length between the Gamecocks last two championships.
 
Senior Kaylee Frear completes her Gamecock career with 1,058 kills, 17th all-time for the program, and 12th in its Division I tenure. She also exits with 437 blocks as one of only three Division I Gamecocks to surpass 400. Anderson put down 693 kills and 520 digs in her time in Jacksonville, despite missing time with injury. And in their final seasons, Schmidt finished with her career-high in kills for a season, while Cloutier tallied her career-most digs along the back row.
 
JSU's senior class won 79 matches, tying the 2009 class for the second-most for a four-year period, behind only the 2006 senior count of 87.