Kentucky Wesleyan College Athletics

The Lady Panthers finished with an unprecedented 24-6 overall record, highlighted by a 12-2 record in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference, en route to winning the G-MAC regular season championship.

They earned the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, which they'll host starting on Thursday at the Woodward Health and Recreation Center. KWC faces Central State at 7:30 p.m. in its first match. The tournament concludes with the championship match at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Naturally, the results so far haven't come as a surprise to Brown, now in his fourth season as KWC's coach.

"I think a lot of the girls expected it because they were so motivated and so driven," he said. "They set their eyes on a certain goal and worked very hard throughout the season to get there."

Make no mistake, it's been an impressive turnaround for KWC. The Lady Panthers finished 11-23 last season, which was the most wins for a KWC team in at least 20 years.

He felt like his experienced group was ready to take the next step and have a breakout season. The Lady Panthers boast one senior, Jordan Rickert, and five juniors.

"The leaders that we have that stepped up were amazing this season," Brown said. "We also had several others that were new to our program that really helped push us as well. We have a really well-balanced team and you can tell by having different players that were named Players of the Week in the G-MAC."

Indeed, juniors Chelsea Brothers and Bridget Johnson, sophomores Dallas Zimmerman and Nikki Jenkins and freshman Summer Alford (twice) were all named G-MAC Athlete of the Week.

The Lady Panthers got plenty of other solid individual performances, but Brown said the defining charasteristic of this team was that it never settled. He added that on top of all of that, he felt his team was focused no matter who it played.

"Even in times when it looked like we were down and out, our team didn't give up," Brown said. "They kept fighting. That proved to be prominent in our match against Cedarville when we were down 9-5 in the fifth set and not one of our girls looked worried. No one checked out, in a sense. They knew they were still in it and they kept fighting for it. That's what helped us go on a 10-1 run to close it out."

KWC's efforts this season were rewarded as it won't have to travel for the conference tournament and will instead have the luxury of playing on its home court.

Don't think for a second, though, that the Lady Panthers are allowing themselves to get comfortable.

"We're not finished," Brown said. "The season's not over for us. Winning the conference tournament is that finale for us. We're very focused on that. I think going into our conference season, the target was kind of on our back anyway because we had been taking such a great record into conference play."