In the days after he watched Rya McKinnon tally a program-record 30 kills in a five-set win over George Mason, Howard coach Shaun Kupferberg had a simple message for his sophomore outside hitter.
Kupferberg did not want McKinnon to ever do that again.
Make no mistake, Kupferberg wasn’t being critical of his sophomore outside hitter. He was impressed by the eye-opening number as much as anyone. But the circumstances under which McKinnon accumulated that total were not ideal.
The Bison (3-3) have been beset by injuries in the early going, so depth already was an issue, and Kupferberg was using a makeshift starting lineup. Eventually, Kupferberg said, he was out of subs. In fact, Howard played a point in the fifth set with only five players on the court.
All of that conspired to have the Bison lean on the 2022 MEAC freshman and player of the year a little more than they would have liked.
“Honestly, we don’t want her getting 30 kills,” said Kupferberg, in his 11th season at the historically Black school and coming off a 20-10 effort in 2022. “I said, ‘I hope you never break that record because we should never be setting you that much.’ ”
Be that as it might, the performance illustrated just how dominant McKinnon can be and how she has the ability to carry a team. The the product of Hoover, Alabama, had to do a lot of the heavy lifting during Howard’s first three matches, taking 164 swings and piling up 71 kills — while hitting .300 — as the Bison went 2-1.
In the match before her 30-kill effort against George Mason, she had 27 kills (.371) in a five-set victory over George Washington. Howard opened the season with a three-set loss to Georgetown, and, perhaps not coincidentally, McKinnon struggled in that match, getting “only” 14 kills on .143 hitting.
Still, 71 kills in three matches? That’s heady stuff at any level.
“It was very fun and a very rewarding feeling,” McKinnon said, “just knowing that I had to sit out the previous (season’s early matches because of injury). It felt good just to be back on the court and be able to get those kills.”
McKinnon would be in the discussion of the best least-known player in the country, and her background makes her a bit of an underdog as well.
McKinnon even started out in another sport: gymnastics. But she decided she was “way too tall” for gymnastics, so she took the road…
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