Montague’s Jaelyn Sundberg wins wild Player of the Week vote driven by volleyball backers

In a two-person battle where you hate to see either lose, Montague’s Jaelyn Sundberg edged North Muskegon’s Natalie Pannucci in a wild vote for CatchMark SportsNet Player of the Week.

The fan poll went absolutely bonkers this week, driven by the two volleyball standouts, whose supporters drove a race that totaled more than 30,000 votes.

A late surge by Sundberg’s backers this morning (Friday, Sept. 16, 2022) pushed her over the top with 14,875 votes. That total was enough to surpass Pannucci’s total of a whopping 13,849 votes.

Voting totals for each of those girls nearly tripled the total output in each of the previous two CatchMark SportsNet Player of the Week polls.

Six athletes were nominated for this week’s poll and accompanying story, which highlighted top performers in the West Michigan Conference for the week of Sept. 6-10, 2022. Final voting results can be found at the bottom of this story.

Sundberg is a 5-foot-8 sophomore setter for Montague’s volleyball team, which is off to an 8-11 start against a challenging schedule. She is a two-year starter, who earned all-conference honorable mention accolades last season and made the all-area up-and-coming team.

During the week of Sept. 6-10, Sundberg amassed 162 assists and 36 digs in seven total matches for the Wildcats. On the season, she has totaled 398 assists, 86 digs, nine kills, seven blocks and five aces.

Montague heads to Cadillac Saturday for another tough competition. This coming Tuesday, the Wildcats host Whitehall in a key West Michigan Conference Lakes Division battle. The Montague-Whitehall match begins at 7 p.m.