The road to a second consecutive LOVB championship was not smooth. It was not clean. It was, as head coach Erik Sullivan put it, a season of clawing and scratching — and that was before the playoffs even started.
LOVB Austin finished the regular season tied for third at 10-10, having needed to win its final three matches just to reach the postseason. They had dropped four of their previous six entering that stretch. But those final three — against Madison, Salt Lake and Nebraska — all went Austin's way, the last one a five-set decision over Nebraska that punched their ticket on the final weekend of play.
From there, Austin won a semifinal golden set over No. 2 LOVB Atlanta, then won the LOVB Championship in another golden set over No. 4 LOVB Salt Lake, 15-8. Back-to-back champions.
What carried them through was something built over months of the league's most contested matches. Austin played eight five-set matches during the regular season — tied for the league lead — and went 6-2 in those. No team won more fifth sets. That record was not a coincidence; it was a habit.
"I know my body's not grateful for it, but I'm very grateful that we played a lot of five-setters this year," outside hitter Logan Eggleston said after the championship. "It gave us a lot of confidence. We knew going into every single fifth set that we had every opportunity to go out and win that [championship] game."
Skinner was the constant. She scored 56 points in the postseason — on a team that needed every one of them — and was named Championship MVP for the second consecutive year. But Austin's run wasn't built on one player.
Eggleston added 53 postseason points, maintaining Austin’s 1-2 offensive punch that powered them through the postseason. Carli Lloyd entered the starting lineup at the end of the season, spurring Austin’s rally to the postseason, and Asjia O’Neal was a dual threat in the middle all season.
The championship itself came down to a golden set, following a five-set match that itself followed a five-set series opener Salt Lake won two days earlier. Five sets on Thursday. Five sets Saturday, then one more to settle it. Austin won the golden set 15-8.
"Even when we were up 14, I still never had that relief until that last ball," Skinner said.
Austin won 2025’s inaugural LOVB title in similarly thrilling fashion. Last year, they entered Finals as the No. 5 seed, won in the quarters and semis with reverse sweeps before sweeping Nebraska in the championship match. This year, they finished .500, scraped into the playoffs on the final weekend, and did it again.
"We're creating a legacy," Eggleston said. "In a new league that is this competitive, to come out on top like this, we're solidifying something really, really special."
Sullivan agreed.
"People see on the outside and they think it's just this easy, smooth thing," he said. "There's a lot of ups and downs that go into it, a lot of hard work. To be able to get the end result like this, it obviously makes it all that much more special."
For Austin, the hard way is the only way they've ever known. So far, it keeps working.
