SEARCY, Ark. - One year after losing to Arkansas Tech in the Great American Conference Volleyball Championship final, Harding reversed its fate with a resounding four-set victory Saturday at the Rhodes Field House. After splitting the first two sets, the Lady Bisons won going away, 25-12 in the third set and 25-16 in the final set.


Like in their final regular-season meeting, Arkansas Tech (27-10) started strong and took the first set. Brittany Ryan registered five kills with a  .714 hit percentage. Morgan McKellar notched six of her match-high 25 digs.
 
The Golden Suns looked primed to take the second set as they methodically held a lead throughout the set and built an 18-14 advantage. Harding (28-6) rallied and scored seven of the next nine points to take its first lead of the set, 21-20. Despite falling behind again at 23-22, the Lady Bisons tallied four of the set’s final five points the even the match.
 
The Lady Bisons hit .486 in the set and didn’t commit an attack error in the set. GAC Player of the Year Mollie Arnold collected seven of those kills. The Golden Suns almost matched the Lady Bisons’ offensive efficiency as they hit .419 in the set with only one error. Ryan, Kaitlyn White and Kaci Jackson combined to hit .538 in the set.
 
The Lady Bisons seized control of the match in the third set as they won the first six points of the set built their lead to 14-4 en route to claiming a 25-12 win. While the Lady Bisons offense rode the stellar play from the second set, the Golden Suns offense cooled off significantly. They hit just .057 with six errors.
 
Not wanting a repeat of its semifinal match – in which they were pushed to a fifth set – the Lady Bisons left no doubt and closed out the tournament in the fourth set. A 9-1 run early the set pushed the Lady Bisons advantage to 15-6 and when Bailee Graham delivered the championship-winning kill, the Lady Bisons had secured their first GAC Championship crown.
 
“The Tech rivalry is nothing new to me; we had it when I was in school,” Harding head coach Meredith Fear said. “When you’ve played a team twice already in the regular season and you’ve watched enough film, it really doesn’t come down to the X’s and O’s. It just comes down to playing well and we did that.”

Arnold earned Tournament MVP honors after she registered her second 20-kill performance of the weekend. Amber Schinzing and Bailee Graham joined her on the All-Tournament Team. McKellar and Amber Cerrillos made the All-Tournament team from Arkansas Tech while Southern Arkansas’ Denise De Vine and Southwestern Oklahoma State’s Lindsay Dusin rounded out the seven-person team.
 
“When I first got here in the spring, we gathered here in the gym and we looked at the banners and how it had been a while since we had been able to put a [year] up,” Fear said. “A lot of the girls remembered that moment and looked back on it and now we will have that same moment when we watch [their banner] being raised.”