Jacket Nation Sports

It’s Lady Jacket Golf week at Jacket Nation Sports!

These girls were a lot of fun even if they did kind of takeover the studio!

Want to know what a bougie bus ride is?

Tune into Jacket Talk tomorrow and get to know these girls!

Shoutout to Big Whiskey's American Restaurant & Bar - Lebanon for the gift cards for all of our Jacket Talk guests this year!

VolleyJackets Sweep Waynesville, Turn Attention to Final Home Match

Lebanon volleyball took care of business on the road Tuesday night, bringing home a three-team sweep over COC opponent Waynesville.

The varsity VolleyJackets won in straight sets, 25-16, 25-13 and 25-21, while the JV battled through three sets for a 25-16, 22-25, 15-7 win. The freshman team completed the sweep with a 25-10, 25-13 victory.

For the varsity, a big part of the night came from behind the service line.

Kenzie Uder finished with 10 aces, while Livia Ahmann and Graicyn Hazlewood added two each. Lebanon has continued to put an emphasis on aggressive serving and getting opponents out of system, and Tuesday night was a good example of what can happen when that starts working.

Lebanon also had an efficient night offensively.

Ahmann finished with 15 kills and Rikki Reimers added 11, giving the pair 26 kills on the night. Harper Starnes recorded 20 assists and also found opportunities to score with several setter dumps, giving the VolleyJackets another option for opposing defenses to worry about.

Lebanon did have some serve-receive issues early in the opening set, but settled in as the match went along. Serving and serve receive continue to be areas of emphasis for the VolleyJackets as they work to create better opportunities for the offense while making things more difficult on the other side of the net.

Reimers led the varsity defense with seven digs. Hazlewood, Starnes and Brayli Ogle each added four. Ahmann, Anora Haney and Reimers each recorded a kill block.

The JV also got a strong night from the service line with Lauren Ledbetter recording six aces and Leiah Kavanaugh adding four. Kavanaugh led the attack with 13 kills, while Ty Weaver and Jara Milligan each finished with six. Ledbetter had 29 assists and joined Keely Uder with a team-high 10 digs.

Lebanon's freshman team made quick work of its match in two sets. Elise Rhoades had six aces and 11 assists, while Anna Kinnett added three aces and five kills. Leiah Kavanaugh also had five kills, with Myla Baldwin adding four.

Now the VolleyJackets come home for a pretty special couple of days.

Thursday will be Lebanon's final regular-season home match and Senior Night, with the program recognizing senior Caymn Halstead.

It will also be a special Pinkfest night as Lebanon recognizes Preslie Bishop as this year's Pinkfest recipient.

Then on Saturday, Lebanon will host the JV and Varsity Missouri Cooperage Pinkfest Tournament, bringing a full day of volleyball to Lebanon and continuing an event that means quite a bit more than what happens on the court.

Three wins at Waynesville was a pretty good way to get that week started.

📸: Lebanon Area Sports

Let’s go!!!

Huge congrats to 2026 All-COC Medalist Carsyn Henson (9th) and Natalie Skoufos (10th)! Next stop, Districts in West Plains on Thursday! Go Jackets!

More.

Our first six varsity football broadcasts have generated more than 6,600 hours watched on YouTube in the analytics report we pulled.

That's the equivalent of one person sitting there watching Jacket Nation Sports for 275 days straight.

Wild.

That's kind of hard for us to wrap our heads around.

And football is only part of it. Our Facebook content is generating hundreds of thousands of views every month across everything we do. Volleyball. Football. Band. Cross country. Jacket Talk. Creator content. Highlights. Replays. Photos. Stories.

People are watching and the part we're most proud of is that we don't pay for any of it.

We don't boost posts or pay to promote our videos. When you see something from Jacket Nation Sports getting watched or shared, it's because somebody chose to watch it. Somebody chose to read it, share it and hopefully come back again.

That's pretty cool.

Especially when we think about what we've been trying to build this year.

Our word has pretty much been "more".

More coverage. More students getting some attention. More opportunities for students who want to learn how to create content. And more ways for people to actually find and watch all of it.

We've tried to put our money behind that idea, too.

We've added wireless equipment that gives us more flexibility with our camera feeds and helps us continue improving our replay system. We bought a van because moving an entire production from one stadium or gym to another every few days takes a lot of stuff.

Actually way more stuff than we realized and somehow I still always forget something.

We're also still working on the website, mobile app and Roku. All three are part of the same idea. We want Jacket Nation Sports to be easy to find and easy to watch, whether you're sitting at home in Lebanon, traveling for the weekend or living somewhere else and trying to keep up with what's happening back here.

Some of that has taken longer than we wanted. Some of it has been harder than we expected.

And there are still a few things we're still trying to figure out. Bonus points if saw our brief use of the telestrator on Friday night against Glendale!

Are we a perfectly polished media company? Far from it to be honest. We're still learning every week, and sometimes we're learning while Kevin and Millsap are talking and I'm frantically trying to figure out why something that worked perfectly five minutes ago suddenly doesn't.

If you've ever watched one of our broadcasts, there's a decent chance you've watched us figure something out in real time.

But then we pull an analytics report and see 6,600 hours watched from six football games, and it puts all of that into perspective.

Because there's somebody on the other side of that screen.

It might be a parent who couldn't make the game. A grandparent watching from home. Somebody who graduated from Lebanon and lives three states away now. A kid pulling up a replay to watch a play again. Or somebody in town who just loves the Jackets and wants to keep up.

That's who we're building this for.

And as Jacket Nation Sports grows, we want that growth to create more opportunities for other people, too.

That's a big reason we've put more emphasis on our Creator Program. We want students to have a place to try something. Shoot video. Take pictures. Make graphics. Create something funny. Learn how a broadcast works. Get behind a camera. Get in front of one.

Maybe even make a little money doing it.

We've also learned that not everything needs to be perfectly polished. Sometimes the stuff that's a little more raw and a little more fun is the stuff people connect with the most.

We want more kids to get an opportunity. We want more teams and activities to get covered. We want more moments captured that otherwise might disappear after Friday night.

That's what 'more' means to us.

The equipment helps. The van helps. The website, app and Roku will help. A really good replay definitely helps.

But none of those things are Jacket Nation Sports.

This community is.

The students who let us tell their stories. The coaches who give us access. The parents and grandparents who share our stuff. The businesses that sponsor what we're doing. The people who watch a volleyball match on a Tuesday night or spend three hours with us on a Friday.

And the people who have been around since Jacket Nation Sports was a whole lot smaller than this.

So yeah, we're proud of 6,600 hours.

We're proud that hundreds of thousands of views are happening on Facebook. We're proud that people are choosing to watch this stuff without us spending money to put it in front of them.

But mostly, we're thankful.

Because every one of those numbers tells us there's an appetite for more coverage of these kids, these teams, these activities and this community.

You guys keep showing us you want 'more'.

We're going to keep trying to give it to you!