Unbroken Records: A never-ending volley of victories
Each Wednesday, Prep Rally uncovers the story behind the most remarkable standards in high school sports for our Unbroken Records series. This week: A never-ending volley.
Sally Kus never even wanted to coach high school volleyball.
"I really wanted to coach basketball and there were no other openings," she told the University of Buffalo's student newspaper in 2002. "I felt the one year I played [volleyball] in college was so stupid."
Now Kus owns the record for consecutive prep volleyball victories -- once the longest win streak in all of high school sports -- and literally wrote the book on coaching volleyball. Seriously. It's called, "Coaching Volleyball Successfully." Look it up on Amazon.
Kus guided Sweet Home High (Amherst, N.Y.) to 292 straight wins from 1978-87, eventually compiling a career record of 792-29 (a remarkable .965 winning percentage) over 23 prep coaching seasons. She captured 20 straight Section VI Class A titles and the first six Western New York state championships ever awarded (1990-95), according to her Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame induction bio.
The winning streak spanned 10 seasons and included eight undefeated campaigns, outlasting the only other prep volleyball programs to eclipse 200 straight victories (which both happened to begin during Sweet Home's streak): Maplewood (N.J.) Columbia High's 247 from 1977-88 and Irwin (Pa.) Norwin High's 203 from 1975-79. Elmira (N.Y.) Horseheads High eventually snapped Sweet Home's streak in 1987.
Ironically, Kus also took over a University of Buffalo program that lost 49 consecutive Mid-Atlantic Conference matches last decade. Thankfully, that's not an NCAA record.
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