VOLLEYBALL SETS NEW STANDARD.

The HPU volleyball team experienced a season of firsts in 2017.

The Panthers claimed the university's first at-large bid in 19 years at the Division I level and became the first Big South volleyball program to do it.

HPU was the first Big South squad to post a perfect 16-0 record in regular season league action. All of those wins came in the midst of a programbest 19-match winning streak, which included 14 sweeps.

It was the first group in program history to qualify for consecutive NCAA Tournaments and the first to win a set once it made the national tournament.

Head Coach Tom Mendoza wasn't the first HPU coach to win Big South Coach of the Year--he was the second. However, he was the first to earn the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Southeast Region Coach of the Year award. Meanwhile, junior Molly Livingston garnered AVCA All-Southeast Region Honorable Mention to become the first Panther to obtain that honor.

As Mendoza said after the team's NCAA Tournament setback to Purdue on Nov. 30 in Salt Lake City, Utah, this program's story is just beginning.

"There are programs with history and there are programs that are writing their history, and I think this group is writing HPU's history. There is a lot they should be proud of," says Mendoza.

If this is just the beginning, it's a great place to start.

Entering the season, High Point was among the top-100 Division I volleyball programs in the RPI during one out of nearly 200 weeks. This season, however, the Panthers never left the top 65, peaking at No. 39 in the final ranking.

Leading the way, the senior class of Haley Barnes, Amy Pilat and Carly Jimenez were a part of a 13-16 campaign as freshmen in 2014. But then they guided the program to an unprecedented run of three straight 20-win seasons, raising the program's final RPI from 179 as sophomores, to 103 as juniors, to 39 in their final season.

"Before becoming a senior, I never looked back on all that we accomplished," Barnes said after her final match. "We recruited the right people, and we really had the drive to get better. Then, when Tom and the new coaching staff came in, it helped us realize our potential and started pushing us forward in the right direction. To see this turnaround in four years has been pretty amazing."

That example set by Barnes, the program's first three-time All-Big South First Team selection, and her classmates has inspired the next group of Panthers to continue the program's upward trajectory.

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