By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

The Spain Park Jaguars looked like one of the best teams in the state down the stretch last year, growing from a dominant area run into a legitimate title contender that fell just short in the semifinals.

Now, the landscape looks different as Class 6A is now the highest classification, and the players look different with the graduations of Cailyn Kyes, Bea Wiggins and Ja’Niyah Moseley. However, the Jags are still the same threatening team that they’ve always been.

“I think for us, the biggest thing is to not compare ourselves to last year,” Spain Park coach Justin Kisor said. “We can’t do that. It’s a different team, different path. I think that we’ve got to find our own identity with this team, and I think that starts with our culture.”

It’s a very young team, with just one senior in returning defensive specialist Madden Scott. Even so, it’s still a very experienced team with four players back who had some starting experience in October.

That’s highlighted on the offensive end by Peyton Harrington, the All-County First Team outside who blossomed into one of the most athletic and devastating pin hitters in the state as a sophomore last year.

Harrington was thrown into the fire as a freshman in 2024 to make up for an injured Wiggins, and Kisor believes that paid huge dividends in 2025. Now, he just gets to sit back and watch her follow in the lineage of Audrey Rothman, Megan Ingersoll and Wiggins as elite outside hitters at Spain Park.

“For me to just let her go out there and play six rotations is huge for us,” Kisor said of Harrington. “And so, that was one thing that I really enjoy her hard work and she’s a great athlete. So, she does a lot of things that’s like, ‘Holy crap, this is insane.’ She wowed me with her ability to just make athletic plays.”

Wiggins’ graduation opens up the opposite pin, which will be filled with one of last postseason’s standouts in Chloe Shumate. She backed up Moseley at middle blocker last year but broke out in the second half of the season, eventually hitting .400 for regionals and state to make the All-County Second Team.

Now, she gets a full-time spot to showcase her offensive and defensive capabilities. She will still split time at the middle in addition to the outside, but sophomore Sarah Latham will take the driver’s seat there with junior Emilie Taylor and sophomore Kendall Hyde helping as well.

Kisor said that even more than her progress on the court, she’s grown into an even greater leader for the Jags. It’s leadership that starts at home, as she is the daughter of UAB men’s basketball assistant Chris Shumate.

“She’s taken a huge leap in leadership in real life,” Kisor said of Shumate. “She is a competitor and she’s a bit more vocal this year than she was last year, which is good for her.”

It’s also good for Spain Park, which lost a pair of vocal firebrands in the Shelby County Player of the Year Cailyn Kyes and Moseley plus the veteran leadership of Wiggins.

Even with all the production they lost, Kisor is more concerned with the leadership that’s now gone.

“The biggest thing I think with us there is just a leadership that we lose,” Kisor said of the Class of 2026. “Yeah, their skill was really good, but their leadership was special. But they did a really good job of teaching our younger girls like how to lead and what that looks like. And so, I think we are losing three really good players, great players, but we’re losing like even better leadership.”

To his point, Kisor said Harrington is working to become more vocal alongside Camdyn Kyes, the sophomore All-State libero now entering her mind-boggling fourth year as a starter. Their veteran presences will anchor the Jags for the next two seasons both on the stat sheet and in the huddle, helping them recapture the player-driven leadership that marked last year’s squad.

The loss of a county Player of the Year does open a starting setter spot though. It’s one that Kisor plans on filling with a 6-2 rotation, tasking junior Peyton Bohan and sophomore multi-sport star Lynlee Franks with splitting the sets.