Eastern had been waiting for a long time.

The Panther’s volleyball team finally looked the bully in the eye and hit back hard, and repeatedly.

In this instance, the bully takes the form of a cartoon that looks like KFC’s Colonel Sanders.

This playground fight that turned into a stellar volleyball match was only short a set of monkey bars and a flagpole. The bad blood had been brewing for over a year when the Colonels defeated the Panthers in two matches without essentially breaking a sweat. The Panthers took their lumps, lost their lunch money and went home crying.

In all of it’s arrogance, EKU doesn’t even recognize the tie in Ohio Valley Conference championship that the Eastern rightfully says it earned after both teams reached a 15-1 conference mark.

“The kids wanted this match today more than anything, you could see it, the way they stuck with [the game plan],” Eastern head coach Lori Bennett said. “There was just a lot on the line today since we only get to play them once before the tournament.”

To make matters worse, EKU had senior Liz Guard grace the pages of Sports Illustrated after being named OVC Offensive Player of the Week. Setter Maren Crabtree was National Freshman of the Year, former outside hitter Erica Gerth was an Honorable Mention All-American but both got no love from SI. As they say in the south, they were fixin’ to send them back to Richmond, Ky. unhappy.

A crucial part of the victory may be the fact that the 2005 rematch of the heated rivalry will be in Eastern’s backyard at Lantz Arena.

Thanks to the boo-yah, back-back-back network (ESPN) that will broadcast the final match, the host school of the 2005 OVC Tournament will be decided after the weekend of the October 22. If the Panthers can win its next six matches, five of which are schools that didn’t sniff a .500 record, Eastern will clinch that honor for the first time since 1998.

A new dynamic has now occurred in OVC volleyball, the bully was defeated and if these two schools meet again in the OVC final, one thing will be different; Eastern proved they have won’t be bullied anymore.

Matt Stevens is a senior journalism major. If you would like to bully him into wearing volleyball shorts you can e-mail him at [email protected].