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Elizabeth Merrill
Kansas City, MO. – A few days before the NCAA women’s volleyball national championship, Texas A&M forward hitter Logan Lednicki posted an old family video to his Instagram account. In the video, Lednicki is probably 5 or 6 years old, wearing a maroon A&M shirt and doing cartwheels on the grass at Kyle Field, A&M’s football stadium. “Say ‘gig’em, Aggies,” his mom, Leah Lednicki, urges him, and little Logan approaches the camera, smiles and gives a thumbs-up.
Below the video, Lednicki wrote that she’s living in “answer to the prayers” of that little Aggie.
His father, Kyle, was a long snapper for the Texas A&M football team in the 1990s, and his mother worked in the football office. She chose Texas A&M because she always dreamed of being a fourth-generation Aggie, but that was only part of it. She wanted to help build the intermediate volleyball program into a powerhouse.
Lednicki lived out that little girl’s dreams on Sunday, hitting 11 kills to help Texas A&M beat No. 1 seed Kentucky for the program’s first national title. The senior from Sugar Land, Texas, was a key role in the Aggies’ improbable December postseason run, helping her team earn three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament.
In the final four games of his career, when it mattered most, Lednicki totaled 69 kills, more than the team. He is one of four seniors who have been with the program since the beginning – they went 13-16 as freshmen – and set the tone for a historic season. The past and present kept revolving in that class on Sunday. With the Aggies hovering in the final set, coach Jamie Morrison high-fived Lednicki and hung onto his arm.
“I think he had that moment of, ‘This could be the last four points of my college career,'” Morrison said. “I think she actually started crying a little bit on the court. I said, ‘Oh, no, did I ruin everything?’ No, it means world.
“There was a group of them here from the beginning who said, ‘I want to be a part of this, I want to build this program.’ …I don’t think they were envisioning a national championship by the time this was done. I think when we were selling what we were doing, it was building something that they could return to in the future and be really proud that they helped build.
It was Lednicki who helped save the season in the Sweet 16 on December 13, when the Aggies trailed Louisville by two sets. She hit a team-high 20 kills in the reverse sweep and after that, Lednicki mentioned a random note that someone had left on the scorer’s table as her team was headed toward elimination.
“Something big is about to happen,” the note said.
She’s always been a charismatic optimist – someone who keeps things loose. Teammates call him everything from their “ride or die” to their best friend.
She has been a recruiter. When Morgan Perkins stepped into the transfer portal after his freshman season at Oklahoma three years ago, his first message came from old club teammate Lednicki. Perkins said the text was something like, “Hey, Mo-Mo, I see you’re in the portal…”
Lednicki, along with sophomore Kyndall Stowers, helped A&M pull together after the Wildcats took a 15-9 lead in the first set. The Aggies later said they experienced some nervousness early in the match, but it was short-lived. Lednicki’s kill pulled A&M within one, and then she teamed with Perkins for a block that tied the game. Stowers’ kill completed the rally and gave the Aggies the set 26–24.
From there, the Aggies dominated. They took a commanding 19-8 lead in the second and made it 18-11 with a strike from Lednicki in the third.
“I was very emotional all day today,” Lednicki said, “just knowing that no matter the outcome of this game, this will be my last chance to represent A&M with my chest crossed.” To be able to do this with these girls – it’s going to end like this, I can’t even believe it.
“I’m so happy I’ll keep this with me for the rest of my life and remember all the memories with these girls.”
In the final moments of the match, one corner of the field chanted, “Why not us?” This became a slogan for the Aggies in the postseason, during the game against Louisville. Late Sunday night, Lednicki congratulated her boyfriend and teammate Ava Underwood on nailing it for the Aggies at a concession stand in Lincoln, Nebraska.
“We just kind of took it and ran with it,” she said. “We started saying it. Ava and Eddie (Applegate) wrote it on their shoes. Now it’s on a T-shirt somehow. Shout out to them.”
“But, I mean, it’s true. It’s a testament to the hard work this program, the staff, the players have done all year. It’s a great statement. ‘Why not us’ has turned into, ‘This is us.’ I think with that scrappy mentality throughout the season, throughout the tournament, we knew it was going to be us.”
Morrison, who came to A&M in December 2022 and changed the culture of the program, thought it would take at least five years to win it all. He gave credit for this rapid progress to the work ethic of his team.
Kyle Lednicki waited for his daughter after the match, amazed at how he and his teammates set out to change a program and turned it around so quickly and dramatically. He said former A&M football coach RC Slocum texted him Sunday morning and wished him well.
“It was great,” Kyle Lednicki said.
Of course, he always hoped that his daughter would attend his alma mater, but he says he never pressured her. Perhaps it was by osmosis, that all those football games, and those maroon clothes, would eventually seep into his consciousness and his heart. It didn’t matter. That fourth-generation Aggie is now a first-generation champion.
Kyle Lednicki saw his daughter’s Instagram post Thursday and it brought back memories.
“I had to put it away because I had tears in my eyes when I looked at it,” he said.
