The senior gave every last ounce of energy and effort on Saturday night in the Division 1 championship game against powerhouse Newton North. But she had just enough left for one more swing.

Click here for a photo gallery from this match.

That swing hammered to the floor in the back corner, the clinching point to finish off Franklin’s comeback and secure a 15-12 win in the fifth set to clinch a 3-2 (25-15, 25-27, 19-25, 25-23, 15-12) victory over the Tigers. It was the final point of the season, and fittingly, it came off the hand that has steadied the Panthers over the past four years.

“I’m feeling great, but I’m dead [tired],” an exhausted Kuykendall relayed after the marathon match inside a quite warm Billerica gymnasium. “That took so much out of us. You could tell how badly we wanted it at the end. Personally, I did not want to lose that game at all. It was the last game of the season no matter what, so you may as well go out giving everything you have. And everyone did.”

Kuykendall has been a starter since she first put on a Franklin uniform, growing from a promising underclassman into the program’s heartbeat. When the Panthers trailed 2-1 in the match, it was the senior who kept demanding the ball, kept taking the tough swings, and kept pulling her teammates back into the fight with words of wisdom and encouragement after each and every point.

“She wanted that one [before] really badly,” said first year Franklin head coach Chris Ridolfi. “Then she went and she made a really good shot up to win it for us. So, you know, I’m proud of her. She’s the kind of kid that just makes everybody better. And she’s willing to do whatever she has to do to make us better. So it’s great that she got the chance to have that last one.”

From the start of her career, Kuykendall has been a massive bright spot in the lineup. Not only has she been one of the best players the program has seen, her energy has been infectious. Whether it was a Tuesday evening in September, or the state championship game, Kuykendall has brought the energy for four years.

“Anytime there’s a good point or a bad point, she brings us together,” said sophomore Emerson Delleo, who started last year as a freshman like Kuykendall did in 2022. “When it’s tense, when we’re nervous, she helps us get through it and figure out how to get those points back.”

“She has so much energy. I look up to her so much and I love playing with her. She’s amazing.”

Statistically speaking, there haven’t been many in the program, or in the Hockomock League, that have contributed across the board. She finished her career with over 950 kills on over 2500 attempts, over 200 aces, over 1,000 digs, and nearly 300 sets played.

“I’m so fortunate to have this as my town volleyball team,” Kuykendall said. “You don’t have to go to a club to find a good team — we have so much talent in Franklin. Every year we bring in strong players. Even the eighth graders coming up, you can tell we’re going to have another good team. The Franklin volleyball program is just great, and I’m excited to see what comes next.”

Kuykendall smacked down a kill on the third point of the fifth set, and then had back-to-back kills, including a nice roll shot that dropped in, as Franklin’s lead jumped to 6-2. Delleo added a kill to put the Panthers ahead 8-4 at the switch.

As Newton North continued to push back, a kill off the block brought the Panthers within two at 13-11, but Kuykendall got a set and made no mistake with her swing, hitting the back corner to make it 14-11. The Tigers got one point back, but the final serve was received by junior Gianna Laurello, freshman Phoebe O’Connor put it up in the air to the outside, and Kuykendall flew through the air, drilling one to the floor one final time as a Panther.

“I didn’t want to lose,” Kuykendall said. “Every chance I saw to get a kill, I took it. Just swing until it doesn’t work anymore, and for me it worked. And Phoebe knows exactly where to put the ball. She makes it easy to just go up and kill it.

“I just wanted to end it. I was confident in myself that I could get that last one for us. You could hear me screaming, ‘Give me the ball!’ I wanted it so bad. Literally this has been on my mind all season. Since August, we’ve been saying state championship.”

Kuykendall also had five key kills in the fourth set, the one that kept the match going for the Panthers. She slammed a pair early, had two in a row midway through — one off the block, and another on a roll shot, and then when Franklin’s once-eight-point lead was cut in half, the senior rose up once again and delivered to keep Franklin a safe distance ahead.

Click here for a photo gallery from this match.

“I feel like it’s just like the perfect way that it could have ended,” said Franklin senior and fellow captain Olivia Alberti. “Because like she came in here like as a freshman, starting outside. She did so good then and she’s just continued to be so good every year. So for her to close it out was just like the perfect way to end everything.

“She really kept us in it, making sure that we were pushing hard throughout the whole game. She wanted to make sure that we were there mentally because we knew that we could be there physically but you just have to have the right mindset.”

Kuykendall is taking her energy, skill, and championship pedigree to Bentley University next year.

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11/15/202511/15/2025

Oliver Ames Captures First State Title Following Epic Comeback

Oliver Ames volleyball celebrates after completing an epic comeback against Wayland to win the program’s first ever state championship. (Ryan Lanigan/HockomockSports.com)

By Ryan Lanigan || HockomockSports.com Editor

BILLERICA, Mass. — The revenge tour is complete.

A year after falling in their first-ever appearance in the Division 2 state title game, Oliver Ames completed a perfect season in dramatic fashion, rallying from a two-set deficit to stun Wayland, 3-2 (22-25, 22-25, 25-16, 25-14, 15-11).

Click here for a photo gallery from this game.

Riding a 24-game win streak into the finals and having only lost one set in its last eight matches, the Tigers had an uncharacteristic start filled with nerves and unforced errors. The Warriors, who knocked off #2 Duxbury and #3 Longmeadow on their way to the final, took advantage and stormed out to a 2-0 lead, just one set away from the upset.

But then the real Tigers showed up.

A dominant start to the third set the tone — the first seven points going in favor of Oliver Ames. And the rest was history — the Tigers closed out the third, dominated again in the fourth, and took an early lead in the fifth that they never surrendered.

“You have no idea,” said a relieved Chelsea Cunningham, who finished her 10th season at the helm of the Tigers with a state championship. “They’re kids, there are emotions, they knew the season was coming to an end. It didn’t hit them until they hit the court. So after we shook the feeling, we got to work.

“We had been in this spot before and we had said all season how we were going to change how it ended — so let’s do it. Taylor Donohue came in after the second set and said it’s time for a reverse sweep and that’s what we did.”

Taylor Donohue helped set the tone early in the final set for the Tigers. After getting blocked on her first swing, she tipped over the double block, and then used a short push shortly after to find a hole in the defense. After a nice pass from junior Molly Milliken (20 digs, 25 serve receptions), junior Chelsea Wagner smashed a kill between the block and Wayland had a hitting error to give OA an early 5-2 advantage.

Chelsea Wagner had two more kills, the latter coming on the third swing of a rally, and a two-touch call on the Warriors had the Tigers ahead, 8-4, at the switch. Wayland got a point back on a kill from Audrey Nugent but a huge dig from senior Evan Casey set up a strong swing from Donohue for a point. Another push from Donohue and good net defense from junior Claire Kenny increased the lead to 11-6, forcing a second Warrior timeout.

Another Nugent kill was canceled out by a serving error and then Kenny came up with a massive block. Wayland made it interesting with two points, including a big block from Fiona Strehle, but Wagner put down another kill to put the Tigers on the brink.

For the clinching point, Donohue (27 kills) took the serve with her hands, junior Lyla McDonough pushed a set to the outside, and Wagner smashed one — her 27th kill of the match — down the line to the corner to clinch the state championship.

“We started to play our game,” Cunningham said of the final three sets. “Playing with confidence, supporting one another on the court and whether it’s an earned point for us, or we lose a point. This is a game of mistakes — we have to make less.”

Donohue added, “This feels good, like really, really good. We worked extra hard this year. It couldn’t be any better. We’ve wanted this so bad, words couldn’t even describe. We had some trauma from last year in this building but we wanted to get rid of that.”

Nerves were on full display early for the Tigers, who have kept mistakes to a minimum throughout the season. Instead, OA had nine unforced errors — half of Wayland’s 18 points in the opening set — as the Warriors jumped ahead 18-12. It seemed OA found a little momentum late after fighting off five straight set points to pull within 24-22 — including three straight kills from Wagner — but the Warriors closed it out to go up 1-0.

OA had a bright start to the second with McDonough landing a pair of early aces and catching the Wayland defense off guard with a dump on the second touch, as the Tigers had an early 10-4 lead. But Wayland kept swinging and clawed back into it. A block from Willa Suratt and a kill from Nugent brought the Warriors within two, and then Wayland went on a 4-0 run to surge ahead, 20-18.

OA battled back with three straight points, including another ace from McDonough (57 assists, including her 1,000th assist, four aces, 35 service points), but Wayland once ahead had a 4-0 run, including two aces from Anna Yalli, to take it 25-22, and go up 2-0 in the match.

“We came out scared the first two sets and we looked at each other and said ‘we have worked so hard for this all year — we need to finish,'” Wagner said. “We reverse-swept and every single one of us on our team did everything they could to win because we wanted it so bad.”

The Tigers had another strong start in the third, and this time, kept their foot on the gas and never let the lead slip. Donohue slammed a pair of kills early and Wagner had another. Then came the separation in the form of a 5-1 run — kills from Wagner and Donohue, and a perfectly placed tip from freshman Lyla Yurrita. When Wayland pulled within two (14-12), Wagner had two kills and Kenny dropped an ace just inside the far line for a 17-12 lead.

OA won the final five points of the match, including a dump on two from McDonough for the 24th point, and an ace from McDonough to clinch it.

“We’ve been waiting for this for a year,” McDonough said. “It’s been so long. We were not going to go down without a fight. We wanted this. After we won that third set, we weren’t stopping. We were like, all gas and no brakes. We did not want to stop.”

The fourth set couldn’t have started any better for the Tigers. Kenny and Angelina Romeiro combined for a block, Donohue and Romeiro each had a kill, and a pair of errors from Wayland to give OA a 7-0 lead.

Click here for a photo gallery from this game.

Kenny, Wagner, and Donohue each added kills in the run, and senior Lindsey Solomon served up an ace as OA’s advantage ballooned to 14-6. Fatigue seemed to set in for the Warriors, who made three straight errors. Romeiro smacked one off the block, and two more Wayland errors put the Tigers on the brink. Wagner finished it off with a kill off the block, 25-14, to make it 2-2.

“The redemption is there,” Cunningham said of her seniors. “The tears, the celebration…they contributed to an undefeated season which we’ve never had before. And I just could not be more proud of all of the kids on this team.”

Oliver Ames finishes the season with a perfect 25-0 record.

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