More than a decade removed from her final volleyball season at Barton, Keauna Vinson (Price) still holds many of the school’s NCAA Division II era records, including the single-season and career marks for both kills and blocks.
She was a four-time All-Carolinas-Virginia Athletics Conference selection, and in 2006 was honored as one of the best volleyball players in league history with her selection to the CVAC All-Time Team.
Not bad for her secondary sport, the one High Point University’s basketball coach refused to let her play, prompting her transfer to Barton.
“When I was considering colleges, I did talk to (Barton) Coach (Wendee) Saintsing, and my family and I both liked it,” Vinson said. “But I was one of those hard-headed athletes who wanted to see what (NCAA) DI was like. So I went to High Point my freshman year, but realized I was missing volleyball. I didn’t realize I loved volleyball that much until it was taken from me. I remember asking my (basketball) coach if I could play both and he said no.
“Well as a freshman and an undersized post player at the DI level, I was working my butt off in the gym. I felt like I was working triple-time just to earn playing time. I finally earned some playing time and worked my way up to starter, but I still felt like volleyball was missing.”
Saintsing had left the door open for Vinson if things didn’t pan out at High Point, and she took advantage by transferring following her freshman year of basketball, a season in which she led the Panthers in rebounds despite coming off the bench for much of the year.
“Keauna was getting some playing time at High Point, but she wanted to play volleyball too, so that was good for us,” Saintsing said. “She knew that she could come to Barton and play. I think she wanted to be closer to home, too. So that put us in a good spot to bring in an athlete of her caliber for both volleyball and basketball.
“She helped our program take the next step. Getting a Division I caliber kid like that who wanted to play both sports put us over the top at that point. We had a good recruiting year that same season. We had a couple of juniors on the team who were good that year, and we brought in a couple of other transfers who helped us a lot.”
The result? In Vinson’s first basketball season with the Lady Bulldogs, Barton won the CVAC regular-season championship with an 18-2 record and qualified for the NCAA Tournament, reaching the semifinals of the East Regional before falling to eventual national champion, California, Pa., and concluding the season with a 24-6 record.
Vinson averaged 17 points and 12 rebounds per game that year and was named the CVAC Player of the Year. She also earned all-region acclaim and was an honorable mention All-American.
In her three seasons at Barton, Vinson guided the Lady Bulldogs to an overall record of 62-26 and a conference mark of 48-12. She was named all-conference and all-region in all three seasons, and capped off her career by being named the CVAC Female Athlete of the Year as a senior.
Over just three seasons, Vinson scored 1,316 points and pulled down 1,051 rebounds, joining Shemkia Reid as the only BC players in the NCAA Division II era to reach the thousand mark in both categories.
Vinson still holds the school’s D2 era record for rebounds and rebounds per game.
“Keauna had such a passion to play,” Saintsing said. “She couldn’t shoot when she got here, but she could flat-out rebound the ball. She had instincts on where the rebound was coming off and she would get there. She wanted to be the best rebounder that she could be, and then she would just keep putting the ball up until it went in. She was a very good defender, too. She won player of the year twice, so she figured out how to score.”
In 2007, Vinson was chosen to the CVAC All-Time Team, once more joining Reid as the only two players in the league to be selected to the all-time team in both basketball and volleyball.
Now she will follow Reid and a teammate who is also on the basketball all-time team, Kelly Lamotta, into the Barton Athletic Hall of Fame. And she will be inducted in the same class as her coach, Saintsing.
“That means everything to me,” Vinson said. “I owe her everything, because this is someone who believed in me and who gave me a second chance. A lot of times you don’t get a second chance when it comes to athletic scholarships, but I made a promise to her that if I wasn’t happy where I was, Barton was a place where I would want to be. She was there for me at the beginning and through it all.”
