Austin Peay's 47th Athletics Hall of Fame Class will be inducted during ceremonies held Feb. 7-8, 2025, includes football's Chris Fletcher, softball's Morgan Rackel, baseball's Phillip Sleigh, volleyball's Kristen Stucker, women's tennis' Lidia Yanes Garcia, and public address announcer Steve Williard. The athletics department will recognize the class at halftime of the men's basketball game against Central Arkansas on Saturday, Feb. 8. Tickets for that day's basketball doubleheader, which includes the women's basketball game against Lipscomb, are available for purchase online through Ticketmaster.
Kristen Stucker was an amazing setter, the likes of which we have rarely seen before and may never see again at Austin Peay. What she did, how she did it – to repeated perfection, distilled down to the barest incredible elements – is nearly impossible to replicate.
That's swell. And we'll go more in-depth on that in a minute. But first, let's talk about the move she would pull to absolutely demoralize an opponent, a combination of finesse, pinpoint skill, and absolutely brazen disrespect for the opposition that had to know what was coming from her and was powerless to stop it anyway.
A few times every match – and no one ever knew when, but it could never have been more than two or three times in a set – the Johnston, Iowa native would settle herself under the ball like she had hundreds of thousands of times before: hands in perfect formation, multiple passing options in front of and behind her, the full arsenal of the Austin Peay attack at her disposal. This was fear-inducing enough – with Stucker running point and dispensing the ball to fellow APSU Hall of Famer Ashley Slay and, at various times, All-Ohio Valley Conference performers Logan Carger, Cecily Gable, Brooke Moore, and Christina White, this was one of the most dangerous eras of offense in program history.
Stucker had all these options with which to terrify whoever was across the net. And a couple of times per match, she would… simply eschew a set at all and dink the ball over the net, invariably into a wide-open space for a Governor point. How unstoppable was this move? Had Stucker met the minimum attack attempt requirement, she would have the top two single-season attacker percentage marks in program history (.366 as a junior, .340 as a senior) and the top career mark at .312 with another 204 attempts.
If you never experienced the phenomenon of Stucker's move in the arena, there's no way to fully account for how dispiriting this wound up being for whoever was facing the Govs. The opposing defense could play everything perfectly – set up the block, establish a second level, cover all their bases – and *plink* Stucker would just nudge it over the net into a little open space. When executed properly – and given who was making the attempt, proper execution was a near-certainty – there was next to nothing an opponent could do about it. For everything that can happen on a volleyball court to hurt the pride of the opposition – a high floating serve hits the ground between four people for an ace, a perfect set slips between the fingers, a spike rockets off the face of a poor libero just trying to defend for a point – watching six people simultaneously deflate when the teensiest little nudge ruined all those perfect plans was the most hilarious.
Hoots of derision were occasionally heard, which are not the sort of hoots typically heard around a volleyball court. Would I have hated this as an opponent (or opposing fan)? Absolutely. I would've demanded a Congressional investigation. Was it a dastardly, thrilling, and fantastic thing to watch as someone with a vested interest in Austin Peay's success? Absolutely. It rocked.
Austin Peay had tons of success during the Stucker era; the 81 wins from 2016-18 with Stucker as the primary table-setter is the best three-year stretch in program history and included two OVC regular season titles and another conference tournament championship. Stucker was not only an All-OVC performer during those seasons, she was the three-time OVC Setter of the Year, which should really now be the Kristen Stucker Award for Outstanding Passing, regardless of whether or not Austin Peay is still in the conference; no other player in league history has won the award more than twice. That's the sort of legacy she left behind.
Stucker finished her career as just the third player in program history with three-straight 1,000-assist seasons; her career differed from those of Jamie deTurck (2001-04) and Annie Glieber (1997-00) in that Glieber played during the side-out, 15-point, offense-vs.-defense era of collegiate volleyball that awarded assists for both offensive kills and defensive… gains of possession? deTurck came along during the 30-point rally-scoring format that predated the use of the libero and goosed offensive output for a few years. Comparing eras is tricky – NCAA.com even has a story entitled "How the different NCAA volleyball scoring formats affect the record books" to really drive this point home – but it's safe to say Stucker would have thrived in any era.
In the modern one – the post-30-points-to-win-a-set, post-unlimited-libero-subs era that began in 2008 – Stucker's 4,705 assists would be the most in OVC history.
Stucker's incredible on-court accomplishments are the stuff of legend; her work in the classroom was otherworldly. A two-time Academic All-American – one of four athletes in Austin Peay history with multiple Academic All-American honors – she was the OVC Scholar-Athlete Award winner in 2017-18. She finished with a 4.0 grade-point average as a double-major (Biology and Agriculture) with a double-minor (Chemistry and Pre-Professional Health) as part of Austin Peay's Pre-Veterinary program. She was a no-doubt inclusion in the OVC's 75th Anniversary Team for Volleyball in 2023 and a shoo-in for induction into the Austin Peay Athletic Hall of Fame.
Kristen Stucker is immortal for her career, which more than deserves enshrinement among the greats who have donned a uniform in Clarksville. She's mythical for her academics – seriously, who is double-majoring and double-minoring these days, with or without a side hustle as the greatest setter in program history? And she's legendary for destroying an opponent one well-placed attack at a time.
