Eastern Washington University Athletics

2004 Volleyball (20-10; Coach Wade Benson) - Eastern won the Big Sky Conference regular season championship for the third straight year, finishing with a 12-2 conference record and a 20-10 overall mark. Senior Keva Sonderen received the Big Sky Conference MVP award, finishing her career with 950 kills, a .333 hitting percentage, 326 blocks and 210 digs. She was inducted into the Eastern Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019. In addition, defensive specialist Andrea Verdoljak won the BSC Libero of the Year Award. Besides Sonderen, junior Lizzy Mellor earned first team All-Big Sky honors. Junior Ashley Jensen and junior Christina Albers were on the second team, and senior Deanna Albers received honorable mention. The Albers sisters, Mellor, Sonderen, Verdoljak, senior middle blocker Megan Kitterman and redshirt freshman Coco Poirer were all named to the Big Sky All-Academic team. Mellor earned a pair of Big Sky Player of the Week honors, and Deanna Albers and Jensen earned that honor once each.

Early in the season, Mellor was MVP at the Iowa Invitational and Sonderen was named to the All-Tournament team, and Sonderen was also all-tourney at the Hawaii Invitational.  Eastern started the season 1-5, with four of the losses coming to nationally-ranked teams in tournaments in Hawaii and Stanford. But Eastern rebounded to win all three matches at the Iowa Hawkeye Classic and claim the tournament title. Eastern would go on to an eight-match winning streak, including a 4-0 league start. That set the stage for a 12-2 league season, which included a nine-game winning streak (10 including a non-conference win over Gonzaga). Eastern’s only league losses were road setbacks at Sacramento State and Montana State. The Eagles swept Portland State in their first Big Sky Tournament game in front of 1,750 fans at Reese Court, then 1,544 showed up the next night for a four-set loss to Sac State in the title game. Sonderen and Kitterman were named to the Big Sky All-Tournament team as Kitterman finished her career with 810 kills, 236 blocks, 267 digs and a .315 hitting percentage. It was Eastern’s fifth-straight match-up against the Hornets in the league tourney title match, including a three-year stretch of hosting the tournament at Reese Court. Eastern's three Big Sky Conference championships in fall 2004 (football, volleyball and soccer) was the first time a school has won all three titles since the league added women's soccer in 1998. At the time Eastern was the only conference school to ever win volleyball and football championships in the same year -- in both 1997 and 2004 -- since the Mountain West Conference was formed for women in 1982 (it became the Big Sky in 1988). No other school has achieved that feat since then (entering 2025 season).

Other players on Eastern’s 2004 squad who played during the season were sophomore Brittney Page, redshirt freshman Angie Johnson, sophomore Heather Gordon, true freshman Emily Otto and junior Sara Reilly. Keri Beck, Kayla Mainer and Chelsea Ross all redshirted as freshmen, and the team’s assistant coach was Miles Kydd, who would eventually become head coach at Eastern. Benson was in the fifth season of two stints as Eastern’s coach, sandwiched around a position as head coach at Auburn. From 2002-04 alone, Benson’s EWU teams had a winning percentage of .780 with 71 victories in 91 matches. In league play during that stretch, Eastern won 58 of 72 Big Sky matches for a .733 percentage. The Eagles in 2004 led the Big Sky in hitting percentage at .234, and six different players combined for 31 double-doubles.