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By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

HOOVER – The last time we saw the Spain Park Jaguars on the volleyball court, they found themselves locked in a tight five-set thriller with Enterprise for a spot in the Class 7A state semifinals.

Unfortunately for Spain Park, the match didn’t go its way as it fell just short in a 15-11 fifth set loss that ended its run at another state championship.

However, the Jags aren’t dwelling on that loss much going into this season. So much has changed around the program for last year’s results to be on their radar.

With former state champion coach Kellye Bowen off to coach in her hometown of Jasper, Spain Park will have a new head coach patrolling the sidelines in Justin Kisor, who came over from Fort Payne ahead of the 2024 season.

While Kisor has the unenviable position of succeeding a program legend, his goal is to pick up where Bowen left off, and that’s a team with lots of potential to contend.

“What I’ve seen so far in the summer with when we’ve had everybody is there’s a lot of positivity and potential that I like,” Kisor said. “If anybody is kind of thinking we’re going to be down, I think that we’re going to surprise some people for sure.”

Internally, Kisor said that they have avoided any talk about trying to live up to or one-up the 2023 Elite Eight team. Instead, they want to keep the focus on the short term and how they’re improving each day.

“Comparison’s the thief of joy, so the comparison is not going to be to last year, it’s going to be like, ‘What can I do to make Spain Park better today?’” Kisor said. “And so, that’s kind of our mindset is just to look at each day and figure out how individually we can get better and how to make the team better.”

Part of that outside narrative of a down year has come from what else has changed at Spain Park beyond Kisor’s arrival, including a difficult new area and a pair of key losses.

Last year’s Class 7A kill champ Megan Ingersoll will not play high school volleyball this season, and the All-State Second Teamer was a key part of the Jags attack last season with 286 kills and 57 aces. Spain Park also lost another All-County talent in defensive specialist Grace Devlin, leaving another hole to fill in the starting six.

However, Kisor likes who he still has on the court. He’ll have a pair of All-County players back in First Team setter Cailyn Kyes and Second Team outside hitter Reagan Gilbert, both of whom will play crucial roles in the attack.

Kyes ran the offense to success last season as a sophomore, racking up 865 assists, 153 digs and 52 aces during the Jags’ Elite Eight run. Now, she’s back with experience and more comfort within the system, and her eighth-grade sister Camden will finally join her in the starting six as the new libero.

Her volleyball IQ is so high that Kisor has given Kyes the keys to run the offense as she sees fit and let her determine the foundation for what the attack will look like. So far, it’s worked well.

“I think that Cailyn, our setter, is somebody that is to me, she’s just a game changer,” Kisor said of Kyes. “She’s so smart. She hustles. She’s a great leader out there.  I told her from day one like, ‘I’m going to give you some options, but you have full control of this offense. I want you to run it. And I said if I see any changes, then I’ll let you know.’ But I trust her completely to run this offense and to make us go and when we have been successful in the summer, it’s because she is making the right decisions, and she does that very often.”

That ball movement to Spain Park’s hitters is something that Kisor said will be key this year, and Kyes will play a big role in that as the setter responsible for setting up big swings and kills.

“I think just being able to move the ball around from pin to pin, that’s going to be huge for us,” Kisor said.

Those hitters who surround Kyes are all strong in the coaches’ eyes. While Gilbert will play a big role on the outside as a proven returning talent, she will be complemented by other experienced attackers like Bea Wiggins, middle hitters Alexa Benda and Ja’niyah Moseley and right-side Grayson Hyde who round out the starting rotation.

While it was easy last season for the Jags to feed Ingersoll often, that wasn’t to say the rest of the offense couldn’t play. It’s far from that, as Gilbert is one of the team leaders and a great all-around player, Wiggins can attack from anywhere and Benda is a dynamic force up the middle.

Kisor is excited by what all his hitters bring to the table and how they can diversify their offensive options to catch teams off guard.

“You can’t really just key on one person,” Kisor said. “All our hitters bring something great to the table, and so I think that’s going to make the defense a little bit uncomfortable with that because we do have hitters that can put the ball away.”

One of Kisor’s main objectives over the summer was to help those pieces play together with improved chemistry, and a key part of that has been building a new coach-team relationship.

As a new coach, the goal for he and his wife and assistant coach Ashley this summer has been to get to know the players and build relationships with them. He believes that is essential to their success.

“I feel like in order to ask so much from anybody really, but especially high school athletes, you’ve got to build that trust so they then turn around and get the results that you want to get,” Kisor said. “And so, I think that’s the biggest thing for us is just building trust with us and building trust and chemistry with our teammates.”

That trust and chemistry will be needed for the Jags to overcome a difficult road to super regionals.

Spain Park will continue to share a region with Chelsea after it knocked out the Hornets in the area semifinals last year, but it will be joined by another pair of Shelby County teams in reigning Class 6A, Area 8 champions Pelham and a resurgent Helena.

Kisor welcomes the challenge and looks forward to his team bringing their best to area play in order to be one of the two teams that advances out of the area tournament.

“The main reason we moved to Birmingham was for that competition,” Kisor said. “As a coach, we love that. I think that each team, Pelham, Chelsea and Helena, they all have their separate challenges they bring, and so the one thing that I like is we’re going to have to bring it every night and compete at a high level.”

Kisor believes one of the keys to competing at a high level is maintaining their composure through the ups and downs of the season. If they can keep a level head and focus on competing as best as they can, he likes their odds.

“For us, it’s just competing and challenging ourselves to always, whether things are going good or things are going bad, just kind of stay even-keeled and play as hard as we can every possible point,” Kisor said. “And I think that if we do that, we can compete with and have a good showing against those guys.”

Competing with the top dogs is nothing new to Spain Park after its years of success in Class 7A. However, the changes that have occurred since the last time the Jags took the floor in search of a title still have some people underrating the program.

For now, Spain Park’s letting everyone talk. The team knows internally that they’ll be a force again, and if people around them doubt their capabilities, the Jags are more than happy to prove them wrong on the court.

“I don’t want to say that we’re going to be an underdog, but if that’s how we’ve got to play, good,” Kisor said. “That’s fine with us too. But I think that we’re going to be pretty solid, and I like where we’re at.”