"Makayla Kuykendall‘s tank is officially empty.
The senior gave every last ounce of energy and effort on Saturday night in the Division 1 championship game against powerhouse Newton North. But she had just enough left for one more swing.
That swing hammered to the floor in the back corner, the clinching point to finish off Franklin’s comeback and secure a 15-12 win in the fifth set to clinch a 3-2 (25-15, 25-27, 19-25, 25-23, 15-12) victory over the Tigers. It was the final point of the season, and fittingly, it came off the hand that has steadied the Panthers over the past four years.
“I’m feeling great, but I’m dead [tired],” an exhausted Kuykendall relayed after the marathon match inside a quite warm Billerica gymnasium. “That took so much out of us. You could tell how badly we wanted it at the end. Personally, I did not want to lose that game at all. It was the last game of the season no matter what, so you may as well go out giving everything you have. And everyone did.”
Kuykendall has been a starter since she first put on a Franklin uniform, growing from a promising underclassman into the program’s heartbeat. When the Panthers trailed 2-1 in the match, it was the senior who kept demanding the ball, kept taking the tough swings, and kept pulling her teammates back into the fight with words of wisdom and encouragement after each and every point."
By Ryan Lanigan || HockomockSports.com Editor (subscription required)
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https://hockomocksports.com/saturdays-schedule-scoreboard-11-15-25/ |
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