Thirteen straight wins. A perfect 9-0 PAC record. A top-30 computer ranking from InsideHitter.com. Six years ago, the program did not exist. Somebody in Latrobe is doing something right.
In January of 2020, Saint Vincent College suited up for its very first men’s volleyball match and lost. The Bearcats finished that inaugural season 0-13. Nobody in Latrobe, Pennsylvania was scribbling postseason projections on a napkin. Six years later, the program has a 13-match winning streak, a perfect 9-0 conference record, and enough wins to register in the InsideHitter.com computer rankings. Top 30 is not a trophy. It is, however, a program that did not exist in 2019 telling 80-plus others to hold its water bottle.
This is not a gradual climb. This is a program rewriting itself season by season, and the 2026 Bearcats are doing it faster than anyone outside Latrobe saw coming.
Building the Foundation
When Kate McCauley was named head coach in October 2021, she inherited a team that had just gone 2-6 in an abbreviated COVID-shortened season. The program was two years old. There was no tradition to lean on, no alumni pipeline, no predecessor to blame. There was just a gym, a roster, and a head coach who had never actually coached a men’s collegiate volleyball program.
McCauley, a 2015 Saint Vincent graduate who played setter for the Bearcat women’s volleyball team, was not exactly a stranger to building things from scratch. Before returning to campus, she led Greensburg Central Catholic’s girls team to section, WPIAL, and PIAA state championships in 2016. That program was later named Westmoreland County’s Team of the Decade. If you are looking for a pattern here, the pattern is that McCauley takes over volleyball programs and makes them better. Quickly.
Her first full season with the Bearcats produced six wins, triple the previous year’s total. Her second, in 2023, produced 11, a program record at the time, along with the first AMCC Tournament appearance and the first postseason victory in program history. In 2024, Saint Vincent went 19-9, reached the AMCC championship match, and earned an ECAC Championship Tournament bid. McCauley was named AMCC Coach of the Year.
The 2025 season brought the Bearcats into their first year of Presidents’ Athletic Conference competition, which is a meaningful upgrade in both prestige and difficulty. They went 11-13, lost more than they won, and advanced to the PAC semifinals anyway. Growing pains with decent mileage.
The all-time program record entering 2026 stood at 49-69. A team still below .500 in aggregate. Nobody is putting that on a banner. But trajectory matters more than history when a program is this young, and Saint Vincent’s trajectory in 2026 points somewhere considerably more interesting.
The Players Doing the Damage
At the center of this run is senior outside hitter Shawn McSwiggen, the sort of player who makes opposing coaches wish they had scheduled someone else. The Thomas Jefferson High School graduate has been Saint Vincent’s offensive engine since his freshman season in 2023, when he earned AMCC Newcomer of the Year and announced his presence with 44 service aces and double-digit kills in 12 different matches. Nobody in the AMCC was thrilled about that.
He has not slowed down. In 2026, McSwiggen leads the team with 332 kills at a .236 attack percentage through 24 matches, averaging 4.00 kills per set with double digits in 17 contests. His ceiling was on full display in a 2024 match at Penn State-Altoona, when he set a program record with 32 kills in a comeback five-set win, surpassing his own previous record of 31. He is the rare player who breaks his own records because the bar keeps moving with him. McSwiggen earned All-PAC First Team honors in 2025 and has made a strong case to be in that conversation again.
Alongside him, senior outside hitter Zebadiah Wyant has been a relentless contributor throughout the win streak. In a two-match conference swing in late February, Wyant put up 38 kills while hitting .259, including a 20-kill, 10-dig double-double in a four-set grind at Hiram. The PAC named him Offensive Player of the Week, which feels like fair compensation for 20 kills on the road. Wyant carries 237 kills on the season at a .191 clip and has become one of the more dependable outside hitters in the conference without generating a fraction of the attention McSwiggen gets.
At the net, junior middle blocker Rocco Marino has been a problem for opposing offenses all season. He leads the team with 48 total blocks at a .211 attack percentage, and his presence in the middle has forced opponents into difficult decisions. Nick Sikorski adds another 31 blocks, giving Saint Vincent a two-headed blocking presence that is quietly one of the better in the PAC.
Organizing all of it is sophomore setter Jackson Genicola, who has 724 assists on the season at 8.23 per set. He has also contributed 223 digs and 30 service aces, which means he is essentially doing three jobs at once and not complaining about it. A setter who can pass and serve at that volume is a luxury. Genicola makes it look routine.
The freshmen are not waiting around either. Setter Jack Ryan, out of Pittsburgh Central Catholic, was named PAC Newcomer of the Week in late February after back-to-back double-doubles in assists and digs, including a career-high 51 assists at Hiram. That is a lot of output for a first-year player on a school night in Ohio. Outside hitter Owen Ward, from Greater Latrobe, has stepped into meaningful rotation minutes alongside the veterans and looked comfortable doing it.
An Unbeaten Conference Record and a Thirteen-Match Streak
The Bearcats opened 2026 with back-to-back losses at a January tournament in Huntingdon, dropping matches to Trine and third-ranked Juniata, the preseason AVCA top-3 team that opened the year 8-0 with a 24-0 set record. Losing to Juniata in January 2026 is roughly equivalent to losing to the 1985 Chicago Bears. Nobody should feel too bad about it.
Saint Vincent has not lost since.
Thirteen consecutive wins, nine in Presidents’ Athletic Conference play, leaving the Bearcats at a perfect 9-0 in conference. The streak includes road wins at Hiram and Geneva that went to extra-point sets, which is the D3 men’s volleyball equivalent of winning a street fight on someone else’s block. Saint Vincent swept opponents in three sets in nine of those 13 victories. For a program that went 0-13 in year one, it is a remarkable swing.
As a team, Saint Vincent is hitting .188 on the season while holding opponents to .179. They are generating more kills than they surrender, averaging nearly 12 digs per set defensively, and winning without needing to produce vintage statistical nights across the board. They beat you when everyone is average and they beat you when McSwiggen goes for 20. That kind of versatility in how a team wins is usually a sign that something structural is working.
What Comes Next
Three matches remain in the regular season: home against Geneva on March 25, a road trip to Chatham on March 28, and a home finale against Thiel on April 1. A conference title and favorable postseason seeding are both within reach. The Bearcats have already locked in the best regular season in program history. The question now is whether they can close it.
McCauley has built this without roster overhaul or transfer portal gymnastics. The Bearcats recruit heavily from western Pennsylvania, develop those players over multiple seasons, and raise expectations every year. The InsideHitter.com top 30 is a data point, not a destination. For a program that did not win a single match in its inaugural season, it means Saint Vincent is now competitive enough to register on a national scale. That is worth noting, even if it is not yet worth printing on a banner.
Several key contributors will graduate this spring: McSwiggen, Wyant, senior libero Tyler Nelson, setter Nicolas Serapiglia, and opposite Chrystiaan Sexton. The next chapter will require answers. But that is a spring problem. Right now, the Bearcats are 13-2, playing the best volleyball in the short history of the program, and running through their conference without a loss.
In six years, Saint Vincent went from 0-13 to a program that makes the computers pay attention. That is not a story about a top-30 ranking. That is a story about what happens when the right coach shows up to the right job and refuses to settle for what was.
