Stanford’s Plummer, Baylor’s McGuyre lead VolleyballMag.com All-American teams

December 24, 2019

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NCAA womens All-Americans 2019-Kathryn Plummer-VolleyballMag.com Player of the Year — Her Stanford teammates converge on Kathryn Plummer after one of her title-match kills against Wisconsin/Ed Chan, VBshots.com

When it came down to it — and truly it did — no one was better than Kathryn Plummer, who saved her best for last.

The Stanford senior outside hitter is the 2019 VolleyballMag.com national player of the year and tops our All-American teams. She was the choice of our panel of coaches and experts, edging out Baylor junior outside hitter Yossiana Pressley, who had a spectacular season herself.

Pressley’s coach, Baylor’s Ryan McGuyre, was a unanimous choice for national coach of the year.

Plummer missed 10 midseason matches for Stanford, which won its third national championship in four years. And like her team, Plummer went back-to-back as the VBM POY. Her stats from the six NCAA Tournament matches alone were staggering as Plummer averaged 6.75 kills, hit .416, and averaged 1.1 blocks and 2.6 digs.

“It’s an honor,” Plummer said Tuesday. “I’ve worked really hard and I’m really proud to get recognition. Not that I haven’t had recognition before, but this senior year was really satisfying to just be able to go out and have fun and play volleyball and not worry about everything that was on my shoulders.

“I’m very, very fortunate to have gone to Stanford, graduated from there and won another national championship. This whole last year was really fun.”

Kathryn Plummer passes against Penn State in the NCAA regional/Ed Chan, VBshots.com

For the season, even with missing all those matches, “KP” still led Stanford with 444 kills, more than 100 more than her closest teammate. Plummer, the 6-foot-6 product of Aliso Viejo, California, averaged 5.22 kills per set, hit .330 for the season, had 24 service aces, averaged 1.92 digs and had 47 blocks, five in the national semifinals and three more in the national-championship match victory over Wisconsin this past Saturday night.

“I don’t know that I’ve seen a player since Ogonna Nnamani (who had 61 kills in two final-four matches for Stanford when it won the 2004 title), who has dominated a tournament the way that she did this year,” Stanford coach Kevin Hambly said.

“And she started out playing that way until her injury. She was hitting above .340 and was playing at a whole different level. It was a bummer that the injury sidetracked that, but she was playing at a different level than any player that I’d seen in a long, long time.”

In that semifinal win over Baylor, Plummer had 26 kills, hit .353, and had nine digs and an ace. In the title match, she had 22 more kills, hit .459 and had an ace 10 digs.

“My family and my boyfriend, they were like, ‘I’ve never seen you look so focused.’ And I told them that I just wanted to do all that I can to make sure that we win. And I had a lot of opportunities to score and I wanted to take full advantage of them.

“It worked out. Definitely.”

Plummer, because she missed those matches, was ineligible to make the Pac-12 all-conference team or be honored by the AVCA — and she was the AVCA player of the year the past two years. What’s more, the AVCA voting is completed before play begins at the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship. Plummer has signed with an agent and expects to be playing professionally in Europe next month.

Baylor volleyball 12/10/2019-Ryan McGuyre — Baylor coach Ryan McGuyre visits with his team at practice before the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship/Ed Chan, VBshots.com

McGuyre took Baylor to new heights as the Bears tied perennial winner Texas for the Big 12 title and went into the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed. The fifth-year coach, who was also the AVCA coach of the year, guided Baylor to a 29-2 finish, losing only to Texas and Wisconsin, as the Bears appeared in the NCAA final four for the first time.

Choosing these All-American teams gets harder every year because both the talent and competition levels continue to rise in NCAA Division I women’s volleyball.

Like last year — when we did it for the first time — we’ve got a fourth team, and easily could have had a fifth.