HTC girls roll in opening round of regionals

FORT MADISON - It’s certainly relaxing in the postseason to get in and get out, with no worries.
Holy Trinity’s volleyball team did that in Monday’s Class 1A regional first-round match against Moulton-Udell at Shottenkirk Gym.
The Crusaders’ 25-7, 25-2, 25-2 win lasted just 43 minutes. In a season when every SEI Superconference South Division match was a grind, getting home early felt like a good break.
“It was nice,” said senior Natalie Randolph. “I feel like we’ve been having a lot of late games, so this was nice.”
The Crusaders (28-10), at No. 3 in the final 1A rankings released earlier in the day, wanted a clean match for the tournament opener, and outside of a few mistakes in the first set, they got that.
Moulton-Udell (0-19) had just seven players available, so the key for Holy Trinity was to not make any mistakes.
“I think it was more of a challenge for us,” said sophomore Presley Myers, who had 14 kills. “We didn’t want to play down a level. We wanted to play up, play consistent. Just play our game, keep our energy up.”
“We’ve talked about unforced errors, and how we needed to clean them up,” Holy Trinity coach Melissa Freesmeier said. “So we talked about how important it was to stay focused, and get the job done tonight. We didn’t make a lot of errors.
“We didn’t have a lot of let-up. I thought they stayed totally focused. They know this is important now.”
Freesmeier has sensed that her team was ready for the postseason, and the Crusaders got that feeling last week.
“The other day at practice, we were playing Christmas music, because it’s the best time of the year,” Randolph said. “It was definitely exciting, we were all getting in the mood.”
“We compare it to Christmas, we say it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” Myers said. “Postseason, for us, is the next level. We’ve been working for it all season.”
The Crusaders only trailed once in this match — 1-0 in the first set — but had a few errors in the first set they knew needed to change.
“The first set, we kind of had some mistakes we didn’t want,” Randolph said. “In the locker room, we were like, let’s clean that up, let’s play our game. So it’s really important to go into the postseason with a clean slate.”
“Our mentality from the beginning was each set, get better,” Myers said. “And we did that. So I think that was really good.”
Holy Trinity scored the first 19 points of the second set, with Randolph serving on 18 of those.
“It wasn’t too exciting serving all of the time,” said Randolph, who was 28-of-29 serving with eight aces.“But it’s fun. It’s fun no matter what.”
Taegan Denning had a similar serving run in the third set, serving the last 16 points. Denning, who was 27-of-27 with four aces in the match, had two of those aces in that run.
Mary Kate Bendlage joined Myers with 14 kills, adding three digs and two blocks. Myers had one dig and eight blocks. Randolph had four kills, four digs and 25 assists. Denning had three kills, four digs and a block. Adalyn Kruse was 10-of-10 serving with three aces, and added a dig. Teagan Snaadt had two assists and 14 digs. Anna Bendlage had three kills, three assists, two digs and three blocks. Jenna Hellman served the final five points of the first set, and had two aces in that run.
The Crusaders advanced to play Danville (13-14) in Wednesday’s quarterfinal. Other quarterfinal matchups are Notre Dame (25-14) at Moravia (19-8), Easton Valley (8-18) at Edgewood-Colesburg (27-13) and North Cedar (18-14) at Calamus-Wheatland (25-8).