Season End 2026
- 19 hours ago
- 4 min read
The 2025-26 season has come to a close. The final league tables are already showing on the website (take a look at the Tables & Results tab), but I will take a little bit of time to add some background to the season.
Once again, it was a busy season, with our 5 divisions (including the Foundation league) providing plenty of opportunity for competitive match play.
Congratulations to all our winners and commiserations to our runners-up.
Looking at our divisions, individually:
Women’s Division 1
For the majority of the season, Maidstone Diamonds were in the lead, winning their first 7 matches. The teams pushing them hardest were:
Newark U-18s-W1 took 5 wins from their first 7 games, losing only to Diamonds and to Tonbridge-W1
Tonbridge-W1 had 4 wins from their first 7games, including losses against Diamonds and Newark (but also taking a win against Newark in the return fixture in early February).
The final 3 fixtures saw Diamonds gradually let slip their lead, with losses at Newark and at Strood, while Tonbridge picked up a win against Dartford-W1 to keep them in the hunt.
Diamonds’ crunch match was at home to Tonbridge-W1 in mid-April, which was Diamonds’ final league match of the season. Tonbridge took the win in 5 sets, which left them 3 points behind Diamonds with 1 match remaining. Tonbridge took a 3-0 win at home to Spitfire-W – a result which saw them level on points with Diamonds but with a sets difference advantage of 1. That made it one of the closest finishes in KCVA records.
Men’s Division 1
The principal contenders all started the season with a mixture of results, including the games against each other:
Oasis won 2 of their first 3 matches, losing out to Team Medway in a 5-setter in late November.
Tonbridge-1 also won 2 of their first 3, losing to Oasis in the season opener (the only division 1 game played in September) and beating Team Medway in a 5-setter in early November.
Team Medway’s first 3 matches all went to 5 sets, losing to Tonbridge but beating Oasis and Spitfire.
Dartford-1 lost their first 2 matches (Oasis and Spitfire) but bounced back to beat Tonbridge.
Spitfire’s first 3 matches all went to 5 sets, including a win against Dartford-1 and defeat to Team Medway.
But, from that point onwards, Oasis went on a winning streak and won 8 of their next 9 games, losing only to Tonbridge in early February. They finished the season 7 points ahead of Tonbridge in 2nd place, so ended up clear winners.
Team Medway and Spitfire were the 5-set kings for 2025-26, each having 6 matches going to a deciding set (including their 2 head-to-head fixtures).
Women’s Division 2
A fairly close-run affair between the 2 teams who finished at the top – Team Medway and Tonbridge-W2.
Dartford-Eagles started the strongest, winning their first 4 games but faded after that, only picking up 1 more set from their next 3 fixtures.
Tonbridge ended in 2nd place with a 4-4 win / loss record for the season. Most importantly, their title challenge faltered when they lost both their matches against Team Medway.
Team Medway won the division with 18 points from their 7 completed fixtures, a single point ahead of Tonbridge and with a superior sets difference.
The division saw the highest aggregate points total for a single match this season, when Eagles came back from 0-2 at home to Tonbridge to win 3-2: 13-25 / 21-25 / 25-18 / 31-29 / 16-14. What a nail-biting end to the match, with the 4th set being the 5th highest score for which we still have records (going back to 2012-13) and one of those occasional scorelines where the winning team scored fewer points on aggregate than the losing team.
Men’s Division 2
Maidstone-Rocks took control of the division from week 1 and ended the season undefeated on 30 points, only dropping 5 sets in the process.
Newark-U18s-1 were their closest challenger with 27 points from their programme, including 2 additional league points under the KCVA Rewards Points scheme. 4 of Newark’s 5 away fixtures went to 5 sets (win ratio 2:2 for those 4 games), while they only dropped 5 sets at home.
Overall, 10 of the 30 games in Div 2 went to 5 sets – quite a high proportion. The match between Newark and Dartford-Crows saw the joint highest points total for a single set (29-31 in the 2nd of 4 sets) across the season (and matched the 4th set between Dartford-Eagles & Tonbridge-W2 mentioned above).
Foundation League
Strood-F managed 2 wins from their 3 matches, 2 of which went to 5 sets. That’s just what we want to see from our Foundation league where the highest priority is providing competitive volleyball and court time in a relaxed environment for our developing players.
The 5-setter between Strood and Maidstone-Quartz was the 6th-highest aggregate points total (210) across all our divisions for 2025-26, with Strood winning 3-2 but with only 2 points between the teams across those 5 sets. More of that, please 😊
Strood ended the season at the top, by 2 points from Dartford-F, with Quartz 3 points further back.
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