Alison Duncan named Post-Tribune 2016 Volleyball Coach of the Year

Crown Point coach Alison Duncan didn’t want to have the same approach to practice or the season when August rolled around.

She knew she had something special.

Duncan returned all of the starters from a team that reached the Class 4A semistate. Three players had secured Division I scholarships and a couple more were capable of playing at that level.

So she changed the way she ran practices to keep them from getting stale. Duncan also put teams on her schedule like Indianapolis Cathedral, Zionsville, Carmel and Kentucky powerhouse Henry Clay to help prepare for a deep run in the state playoffs.

“There was definitely a different emphasis to the season,” said Duncan, whose Bulldogs won a school-record 36 matches. “Our biggest focus was to get better physically and grow as a team and get more experience. We wanted to learn how to compete at the top level and learn to deal with pressure and stress to beat those teams.”

Duncan accomplished her mission.

Crown Point breezed through the toughest conference in Northwest Indiana, finishing 14-0 to win its first Duneland Athletic Conference title. Then the Bulldogs won their second straight sectional and regional championships before surviving five-game thrillers over LaPorte and Zionsville to capture the program’s first semistate.

CP dropped a four-game match to defending state champion Indianapolis Cathedral in the state finals, but nonetheless it was a historic year.

For her accomplishments, Duncan has been named the Post-Tribune Coach of the Year for a second straight year.

Junior Morgan Chacon said Duncan is like a second mom to the girls and that helps create a great environment for learning.

“She cares about us a lot and that’s why we all feel so close together,” said Chacon, the Post-Tribune Girls Volleyball Player of the Year. “That’s what’s helped us become a team and helped us do things that have never been done before here at Crown Point.

“It’s all about chemistry and making the program feel like a family. You can have all the skill in the world, but if you can’t play together, it doesn’t matter.”

Duncan said she was excited to implement twists in practice knowing all the talent returning.

“I always try to do different things every year,” she said. “This was an interesting year because we had everybody coming back so I put an emphasis on new drills.

“There were certain days where we just did station work — newness was very important to me. I didn’t want them to get into a rut.”

Traveling to the Carmel Invitational set the tone for the season. The Bulldogs, who beat Henry Clay in five games and lost to Carmel in five games, played two prestigious schools and didn’t show any fear.

One weekend later, the Bulldogs split matches with Cathedral and Zionsville.

Crown Point lost only one more match, against Kentucky’s Assumption, before going on a 26-match win streak that ended in the state championship match.

“The matches in Indy were important because we wanted to show we were not going to be intimidated by them,” Duncan said. “It was an amazing season. I feel like it’s another stepping stone for our kids to play at that level and I truly feel as long as we are healthy and work hard in the off-season we can make another trip to state next year.”

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Ryan Haskell is a freelance writer for the Post-Tribune.