FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- Punching their ticket to the 2026 NCAA Division III Volleyball Championship, the Christopher Newport Captains captured the team's third straight Coast-To-Coast Athletic Conference Championship with a 3-1 win over #3-seed UC Santa Cruz on Saturday afternoon. The Captains won 25-22, 25-18, 18-25, 25-19 to hoist the C2C trophy for the tenth time in 13 seasons since joining the league in 2013.
Led by conference tournament MVP
Carley Coghill, the Captains also featured
Samantha Dorn and
Avery Hanly on the 2026 C2C All-Tournament Team. Coghill hit a team-high .364 in the championship match against the Banana Slugs and had a match-high 10 kills. Dorn also had 10 kills while Hanly logged a team-high 12 digs to pair with her eight kills.
With the win, the Captains secured the league's automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament and will head to the regional championships next weekend. It will extend one of the longest active postseason tournament streaks in Division III as CNU will return to the dance for the 19th year in a row.
The hard-fought conference crown avenged a regular season loss to the Banana Slugs and Christopher Newport improved to 9-5 all-time against UC Santa Cruz including a 4-0 mark in conference tournament action.
In the opening set, the Captains surrendered a hot start and fell behind, 6-1, but quickly rebounded with a massive run to take control of the lead. CNU used an 11-3 run to pull ahead with Coghill dominating the early possessions. She had three kills in the burst while
Alli Pratt,
Simara Alexander, and Dorn each added one of their own. UC Santa Cruz evened the set at 13-all but was unable to re-take the lead as
Fielding Croft set Pratt for a monstrous slam and Alexander ripped off an ace to teeter back in front.
CNU held onto the small lead the rest of the set and held off a late comeback try by the Banana Slugs with two points to pull within one, 23-22. The Captains clinched on back-to-back Santa Cruz errors to take the pivotal 1-0 lead in the match.
The second set was equally as competitive for the first half of the set until CNU pulled away after the score was 11-10. Continuing to take advantage of balls hit into the net and wide of the floor, the Captains build a 16-11 edge. Rookie
Jasmine Williams added a kill and a block with Coghill to extend the lead to six, 18-12, and CNU would cruise to a 25-18 win.
The Banana Slugs bounced back in the third and defeated CNU by the same score, 25-18, to force a fourth set. In the fourth, both teams showed grit as Santa Cruz erased a four-point deficit to draw even at 13-all, but the Captains resiliency won out in the end with a 7-2 run to open up the lead again. Just five points away from clinching the conference crown, Christopher Newport continued it's season long trend of balance and the CNU setters delivered opportunities for four different players to find the floor. First, Coghill dropped in her 10th kill on a feed from
Lauren Hobbs to make it 22-17. Moments later, it was Pratt elevating for a kill from
Fielding Croft, and the sophomore setter also distributed the last two points on kills by Alexander and Hanly.
With the win, Christopher Newport improved to 22-8 overall this season while UC Santa Cruz concluded the 2026 campaign with a 14-11 overall record. CNU held the Banana Slugs to just .029 hitting in the championship match while the Captains recorded 45 kills and 64 digs in the win.
CNU will now await the decision of the championship committee on the location and opponent for its first round opponent in the postseason tournament. The full 64-team championship field for the single-elimination championship tournament will be revealed during a selection show on Monday, November 16. The show will be live streamed at NCAA.com at 1:00 p.m.
