Local volleyball playoff preview: Chargers excel, Eagles improve, Greyhounds keep running
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NEW ULM -- Each New Ulm area volleyball team has surprised in some form this year.
Minnesota Valley Lutheran has over 20 wins, New Ulm High School has a nine-match win improvement from last year and New Ulm Cathedral had its best Tomahawk Conference record in quite some time despite having a relatively inexperienced squad.
With playoffs beginning next week, all three teams are preparing to make a playoff push this season.
CHARGERS LEAD THE WAY
Leading that pack of New Ulm teams record-wise are the Chargers of MVL. In what might be a surprise to some folks, MVL sits second in the Tomahawk Conference at 7-1 and finished the regular season with a 21-4 record overall.
MVL hasn't had this much success from one of its volleyball teams since 2007, when the Chargers took home their first Tomahawk crown with an 18-5-3 overall record and a 9-0 conference record. They also had two playoff wins.
This season, MVL saw senior Hannah Marzinske break the school's all-time digs record on Oct. 6 and recently watched its junior setter Maddie Pearson break the 1,000 set assist career mark this past Tuesday. Pearson is sitting at 1,008 career assists currently, while Marzinske is at 713 career digs. Marzinske leads the team in digs this season with 313, while Pearson has 702 assists.
The Chargers have also gotten a strong attack from junior middle hitter Mara Weisensel, who leads the team in kills this year with 308. Weisensel also leads the way in blocks for MVL with 90 and had a nine-block match against Springfield this season, tying the school record for most blocks in one match.
In addition to MVL's excitement of a first-round bye, first-year Chargers head coach Amy Pearson is happy to see how far the team has come.
"It's been awesome," coach Pearson said. "The players -- it's great for them to see all their hard work paying off, and I think that the talent has been there, they just needed to believe that they could do it and put in the hard work in order to succeed. They certainly did that working together over the course of the summer and the whole season. And there's not one person on the team that says, 'Set me the ball, Maddie,' or puts themselves above anyone else on the team. They know what their roles are and they fulfill their roles every single night at practice. It's been a lot of fun to coach them."
The No. 3-seeded Chargers will host the winner of Monday's match between No. 11 Nicollet and No. 6 Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop at 7 p.m. on Thursday. The Chargers are undefeated at home this season and own a sweep win over both GFW and Nicollet, but the stakes get higher and the matches get tougher when playoffs begin.
"You get to playoffs, it's a brand new season," coach Pearson said. "It doesn't matter what happened in the regular season, you've got to be ready for everything. Every team has -- whether we keep playing or not -- on the line. So everyone wants to get that win and is going to leave everything out on the court. It's great to come in with the confidence of having beaten them in the regular season, but it's not going to be the prediction of what's going to happen in the game, it's going to be anyone's game every step of the way."
BATTLE OF THE BIRDS
The Eagles will wrap up their regular season on Monday with a trip to take on Redwood Valley. They then travel back to Redwood Falls for Round 2 with Redwood Valley in Section 3AA playoff action on Thursday.
The No. 3-seeded Cardinals have a 14-13 record this season, while the No. 6 Eagles sit at 11-11. With Part 1 of the showdown between New Ulm and Redwood Valley on Monday, each team will have the chance to get a feel for each other and see what needs to be done for Thursday.
"I think it'll be good for us to play them on Monday and then turn right back around and play them on Thursday," New Ulm head coach Stef Dietz said. "It's not going to be easy. They've got a couple of nice middles and a nice outside. So those are the things that we've been working on -- our defense and our blocking -- to the best we can to take them out of their game."
New Ulm has had a solid turnaround this season, winning nine more matches than last season, a season that saw the Eagles end their year at 2-20. For Dietz, first-year head coach for New Ulm, the turnaround so far has been a breath of fresh air and she said that the seniors deserve a lot of the credit for this season.
"It's been a very good season for us, and I honestly have to credit the seniors that came into this season," Dietz said. "They've really been working hard and they've been working, all of them together as a team. Not only did they come in with good volleyball skills, they came in with the attitude that they wanted to change the program. That's really helped us with that senior leadership."
Dietz also said that the team has been very balanced this year, which is good because of the team's ability to not have to rely on any certain player in particular. New Ulm will look to work on controlling the ball more next week with better passing and a better serve receive.
GREYHOUNDS SHOW TENACITY
The Greyhounds will have the chance to show the Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity Bulldogs that they are the top dog in a 7 p.m. home playoff matchup on Monday. The Greyhounds are the No. 5 seed this year with a 15-10 overall record, while the Bulldogs have struggled to get much of anything going this year, going 2-21 and drawing the No. 12 seed.
"A lot of our team went and watched when [LP/HT] played MVL," Cathedral head coach Becky Wilfahrt said. "I know they're [LP/HT] pretty young, they've got a pretty good libero and I know they've got a pretty decent outside hitter."
Cathedral is 6-4 over its last 10 matches and with only one returning starter from 2017 in Sarah Mohr this season, things have turned out pretty well for the Greyhounds. Mohr, a senior middle hitter, has been looked to as a main leader on the floor this year.
Her numbers show that she is more than filling that role.
Mohr leads the team in kills and blocks with 241 and 61.5, respectively. Wilfahrt also said that Mohr has the highest hitting percentage by any player from Cathedral in the last six years at .221.
Senior Mary Herzog and junior Maggie Fliszar have each stepped up this year as well, with 168 and 147 kills, respectively. Herzog is also second on the team in blocks with 21, while Fliszar leads the team in digs with 325.
Senior Karlie Gieseke has 577 set assists so far this year after stepping in to fill a setter position that was vacated after Jenna Helget graduated this spring. Wilfahrt added that she's been impressed with how Gieseke has progressed.
Last season, the Greyhounds won two playoff games before they were bumped from the playoffs at the hands of the BOLD Warriors, who are one of the top Class A teams this season with a 22-2 record. With that loss to BOLD, Cathedral also saw two All-Journal players in Rose Hazuka and Helget graduate.
Despite the losses, the young Greyhounds have responded well this year and have impressed Wilfahrt.
"I've been really impressed with how they've done this year," Wilfahrt said. "There were a lot of people that, coming into this season, didn't think these girls would even win 10 games, and now we're sitting at 15 wins. This was our best conference record -- we finished 6-2, the best we've had in 22 years at Cathedral. So they've done a lot of nice things, they've found different ways to win games."