Consecutive volleyball seasons with one run to the national semifinals and another that culminated in a national championship match appearance built towering expectations for Manhattan Christian College’s 2025 season. But coach Lauren Sanders wouldn’t have it any other way.
Actually, the MCC Thunder had been on the verge of a championship over each of the last four seasons, with final four appearances each year and a standard of 27.5 wins per season. The Thunder were overwhelming favorites throughout the season, culminating with a near-flawless run to the title.
“We just knew with the recruits that we brought in that this was really going to be something special,” Sanders said. “The culture is so strong on our team, and everyone’s goal was the national championship, but we really tried not to focus on it, day to day.”
That’s just how the portrait’s finishing touches showed up on canvas at the D-II Championship at Ozark Christian College, Joplin, Mo. The Thunder won 12 of 13 sets in the national tournament to polish a 32-1 season, one in which it dropped just 13 sets among the 33 matches.
MCC competes within the National Christian College Athletic Association, which labeled former Rock Creek standout Liv Lubbers its player of the year.
Lubbers notched a clutch double-double in the championship match and was joined on the all-tournament team by Hannah Beukelman (Edgewood, NM) and libero Abby Blake (Jefferson City, Mo.), an Avila University transfer. Lubbers keyed a five-player senior class that set the tone for Manhattan Christian. In fact, Lubbers, Beukelman and Hali Clark (Clay Center) entered this season with 84 match wins and went on to finish 116-16, the most accomplished winners in program history.
“They were the ones driving everybody every day to get in the gym and to work hard and prepare for every game,” Sanders said. “And just really brought that never quit attitude to everything that we did.”
MCC swept Bob Jones University (25-16, 25-16, 25-12), which in 2023 stopped the Thunder from the national title. The Thunder’s leader since 2005, Sanders has amassed 494 match wins and was 2023’s AVCA/NCCAA National Coach of the Year.
MCC has won 12 Midwest Christian College Conference regular-season titles and rides a 63-match league win streak. The carryover to 2026 will be an overall 20-match win streak.
Six more players have local ties, joining Lubbers and Clark: Jaiden Brewer, Cheyenne Crow, Jayda Juenemann and Ellie Wilson (Manhattan), Anja VonSpreckelsen (Junction City) and Jacey Schurle (Clay Center). Brewer attended Riley County and Crow, Flint Hills Christian.
“Our girls just played at such a high level that you could see the determination that they were not leaving disappointed again,” Sanders said. “The teamwork and just how the girls work together, there was nothing that was going to stop us. Nothing was in our way.
“This group of five seniors was just the catalyst for all of it.”
And while that senior core will be missed, the Thunder returns 10 players from this year’s roster and will be right back in position to compete for more success in 2026.
This is the program’s second national championship win. The Thunder won a National Bible College Athletic Association national championship in 1993 under Wendy Cott.